Crept Up On Me
by Edinburgh Love
Summary: "Just like that, ten years of footage begin to play across my eyelids." Moments from Finnick's life between the 65th and 75th Games. MOCKINGJAY SPOILERS. Please read and review. NOW COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

_A/N: These amazing characters were created by Suzanne Collins. I'm just having fun with them._

_Special thank you to _**windyday** _for reviewing my previous Finn-fic, _**The Calm Before**_. If you haven't read it, please do! And, as always, reviews __are a writer's best friend. If you read something and you like it, take the time to let the author know. I know it makes my day!_

_Without further ado, I present _**Crept Up On Me**_. Enjoy._

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**PROLOGUE**

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Ten years is a long time for things to change.

They say it gets easier with time. That goes for the nightmares. The women. The fact that nothing in your life as a victor will ever be as easy as they make it seem when you're a kid. That you'll never be able to have or do the things you really want.

And they're right to an extent. You start to lose yourself, and you forget that your life wasn't always this way. And yeah, that makes it easier.

Still, looking at my life now, it's such a huge stretch from the year I won the Games. In District 4, you train to win, and you're honored when you do. You don't cry. You stick with the other Careers. And you hope they kill one another—including the other kid who came with you from home—before they even think to come after you. We're strong in District 4, but we also have swimmers' bodies. We're lean. We're quick. Weapons kind of kids. When I was fourteen, a kid from 1 or 2 could snap my neck. With his hands. Without a problem.

I should have known that something was wrong when Mags became my mentor the day my name was pulled from the reaping ball. District 4. Careers. How was it that we didn't have a male victor suitable for the job? You can imagine my absolute thrill at the idea of my life being in the shaky, wrinkled hands of a seventy-year-old woman who was missing half her teeth.

But hey, if first impressions were everything, who knows where I would be? I certainly wouldn't have Annie.

Mags told me to take everything I knew about the Games and throw it out the window. Another reason I didn't jump for joy at the idea of her being my link to the outside world. But there were things Mags couldn't fight. Even at fourteen, I was sexy, and there was no going against it. And Mags said that if I played up that more than my strength or intelligence or handiness with a trident, maybe the other Careers wouldn't even mind not having me. Because Mags didn't want me teaming up with them either.

At the Cornucopia, I grabbed what I could and ran. It wasn't until after the initial bloodbath that I acquired my first kill and the weapons she carried. I built a shelter and received bread and water that night. When it was time to wash the sweat and dirt off, I got soap. When my hands blistered, medicine. I focused always on my next kill instead of my last. It wasn't hard. And when I got my trident, it wasn't long before I was back home with my dad.

Of course, in retrospect I have to wonder who sent me the trident in the first place. Was Snow that desperate to make me his next puppet that he could have sent it himself? Nothing would surprise me at this point.

After ten years, I've fallen into routine. I've come to terms with the things I've done. And even though I there are things I can't change, things I hate, I'm getting used to that too. Most days, I can even say I'm happy.

It's too much to be with Annie when they broadcast Katniss Everdeen, winner of last year's Games, in a bunch of wedding dresses. I feel bad for Katniss. I've been doing this long enough to be able to discern who's acting on their own will and who's strings are being pulled by President Snow. And deep down, I know she's probably just like me. But even that can't change the fact that I'm jealous. Katniss doesn't seem to want a wedding. I do. So naturally, she's getting married and I'm not. No surprise there.

So I'm watching by myself when a boy pulls a card from a box, and President Snow makes an announcement.

And I am surprised.

I never expected to have the life I want. But now it's doubtful that I'll have any life. I know my name will be called. He'll want to get rid of the strongest among us. I know he's done with me. And I know I won't be coming back.

My mind runs through the names of friends. Which of them will I have to kill in the arena? Then I think of Mags. Of Annie. I won't do it. I won't do it. I won't do it.

But like with everything else that's happened in the ten years since I won, with this I have no choice.

I close my eyes, press the heels of my hands into my temples, let my palms drown out the sound. Just like that, ten years of footage begin to play across my eyelids.

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_Kind of short, but it's only the prologue. I already have another 13 chapters written with several more planned. Let me know if there's something you want to see, and I'll do my best to work it in._

_And pleeeaaase review!_

_Thank you for reading!  
_


	2. Chapter 1

_A/N: __A huge thank you goes out to _**Adrenaline Write**_, whose reviews had me smiling like a fool while I waited around for my boyfriend to get out of class today. I'm pretty sure I got some weird looks. Thank you for your kind words!_

_I love Mags. She was such a huge part of Finnick's life, so naturally his first memory had to be about her. Enjoy, and please review! _

_Anything you recognize belongs to Suzanne Collins._

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**CHAPTER ONE**_  
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Once our stuff is moved into our new house in the Victor's Village, my dad has the genius idea to invite Mags for dinner. I suppose he owes her, since she's part of the reason I'm alive and all. But still, Mags isn't the type of person you picture interacting much with anyone.

She doesn't say much, but she bobs her head along with the words Dad and I say to each other. Watching, you'd think she's not listening and that she's probably a total head case. But Mags is more of a listener than a talker. She's intuitive. And it's not like I'm the only kid she's gotten out of the arena.

By the way he's looking at her, I can tell my dad's still not sure.

"Don't worry, Dad. They'd never let Mags be a mentor if she was actually sick in the head." Mags nods along as she gums her bread. "See? Perfectly sane."

This makes my him laugh which is nice because, since I've been home, I have the feeling he's still really worried about me. We've been all each other's had since my mom died when I was a kid, and I can't imagine what it was like for him when I had twenty-three other kids trying to kill me. He knows I have nightmares too, which can't possibly help.

"Well thank you, Mags, for getting him home to me," Dad says.

"No, thank you," says Mags, holding up a forkful of flounder. Like most everyone in District 4, my dad loves to fish. But instead of selling his catches, he prefers to turn them into delicious meals himself. Now that we're rich, he can afford to give rather than sell food to our neighbors.

After dinner I walk Mags home and she tells me about the other residents of the Victor's Village. Aside from Mags and I, there are three others. Isla, who mentored the female tribute, Mare, when Mags mentored me. Pisces, who was blinded beyond repair, even by doctors in the Capitol, and therefore can't be a mentor. And Vessel, whose even crazier than any of the victors I've met and isn't allowed to be a mentor either. Three of the other houses were at one point inhabited by other victors who have since died.

Even briefly telling me about the others seems to make Mags sad. I'm not sure what to say. I'm fourteen. I won for my looks. Obviously that doesn't compare to Mags's experience with the Games. So I tell her the only thing I can think of. "Well, now you won't have to be a mentor anymore, right? Me and Isla can do it."

Mags shakes her head vehemently. "I'll still be a mentor."

"But why, if you don't have to be?" I've only been a victor for a week, and already I've got plans to bring home another male winner as soon as possible so I can split the duty with him—and that's if I can't get him to do it entirely on his own. I'd rather be shark food than still be doing this when I'm seventy.

"Still have a lot to learn," she says. She means me. And I guess I do have to learn how to be a mentor and all, but that doesn't exactly seem like enough of a reason for Mags to want to spend another year fighting to save a girl who will probably die.

Blushing isn't the kind of thing I do very often, but I can feel my cheeks and ears growing hotter. Mags wants to be a mentor with me because she's still looking out for me. She cares about me. Maybe even thinks of me as the grandson she doesn't have.

"Thanks," I tell her. And even though, I'm only fourteen and I have my whole life to make it up to her, I know it will never be enough.

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_Please let me know what you think. And if there's anything you want to see in this story, tell me and I'll see what I can do._

_Thank you for reading!_


	3. Chapter 2

_A/N: Ummm yeah... somehow, this chapter vanished and I only realized today. So here it is. Again.  
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**CHAPTER TWO**_  
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The Victory Tour. Specifically _my _Victory Tour. All eyes are on me. And who could blame them? I'm the youngest victor Panem's had in over two decades. But even so, that's not why I have these people's interest.

A woman old enough to be my mother pulls me away from the president's party. Her name is Luxuria and she shows me the world. Riding me. Raking her talon-like nails along my ribs. What do I know? I'm fourteen.

Later, alone in my compartment on the train, I lift my shirt, assess the damage. And when Mags comes in, I pull my shirt down over my stripes, hiding the evidence of the crime I'm still not sure I've committed. I know I'm still grinning like a fool though.

All Mags does is give me this sad expression that I don't quite understand. "Be careful," she tells me. She assesses me for a moment, making sure I'm okay, but why wouldn't I be? Then she goes.

I lie in bed, still trying to make sense of it all, and the task only becomes more difficult as I fight sleep. Eventually, I can't possibly stay awake anymore even though my encounter with Luxuria is still playing, increasingly dreamlike, through my head. So I surrender to sleep and hope everything else will keep the nightmares at bay.

Trident in hand, I'm frozen. Warm, moist breath against my cheek. A tongue flicks the cartilage of my ear. "Kill," say the lips against my skin. And my trident impales the first of the children.

Mags wakes me, and instantly the faces from the arena recede back into the hidden coves of my mind. I'm drenched in sweat. Come to think of it, I probably should have showered earlier anyway. Because I reek of that woman, of the Capitol that made me a murderer at fourteen. Mags's eyes on me only make me feel more ashamed.

I leave for the bathroom without a word and stand under a stream of the hottest water my skin can tolerate. Then, because I'm still sweating even though I at least feel clean, I change the temperature to that of ice water. It reminds me of being out on the boat with my dad during really terrible storms. My dad, whose only son was sent away and replaced with a killer. My dad, who normally does the job of waking me from nightmares. My dad, who married my mom at eighteen and hasn't had so much as a girlfriend since she died when I was six. Surely she was the only woman he was ever with…

Mags knows how fucked up this situation is. At least that would explain that look in her eyes earlier. She's still in my room, sitting in an armchair that's makes her look more like a child than a grown woman, when I reemerge in only a towel. "You okay?" she asks me.

"Yeah, Mags," I tell her. "I'm okay."

She smiles reassuringly. Really, it should be scary because so many of her teeth are missing. And the ones that are left don't do much to improve her looks. But when her lips smile, so do her eyes. And Mags has the sweetest eyes. "So young. You have fun. But be careful."

I take this to mean that she understands, even if she doesn't approve. And if Mags forgives me, then I can let it go, this thing that happened with Luxuria. Because I'm fourteen and a victor, and I'm entitled to make an occasional mistake. What do I know of pain and the adult world?


	4. Chapter 3

_A/N: Last one in which Finnick is 14. I've read a lot of stories in which he seems so much older at this age, which I guess is believable, given all he's been through. But when I think of myself at 14 and then try to imagine Finnick's circumstances, the result is sadness more than the anger I've seen in a lot of stories. Right now, at least, he's still kind of helpless. Anger will come later._

_A huge thank you to _**Adrenaline Write**_ who has made this all worthwhile with her reviews of every chapter I've written so far. (She had me smiling like I'd just seen Finnick in his underwear.)_

_If you like this story (and even if you don't), please check out my other two Finnick stories, _**The Calm Before **_and _**A Night for Firsts**_, because honestly, I'm much prouder of those than of this._

_I don't own Finnick, Mags, the Capitol, or District 4, but you already know that.

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**CHAPTER THREE**

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**I'm still fourteen and still unsure whether certain things in my memory actually happened.

I guess the thing that nags at me the most did happen, because I feel different now. When the girls in town look at me, I can smile back without getting that jittery feeling in my stomach. When they make a point to trail their fingers along my bicep, down the line of my chest and abs, I'm not fazed.

It's too cold for swimming now, but I bet they'd swarm the beach for a chance to see me in the water.

Today is my first Parcel Day since my most recent stint in the Capitol. I sit perched in the bell tower of our Justice Building—even the Peacekeepers let me do whatever I want—to watch District 4 help itself to the food and treats it wouldn't have if not for me, and the voice in my head that's taken on Mag's voice tells me, _This is why you won_. But even the joy on the faces of the poor, the ones whose pale skin and open wounds tell me that they never eat anything but fish, can't assuage me.

More evidence of the shift that occurred in my absence from home. I used to be so sure of myself, of the inner-workings of my world. Now I doubt everything. Even something like Parcel Day. In another life, this was a gift. But I've seen the women and men who eat even more delicious food than this and purge themselves to make room for more. In District 4, innocent children will get sick from this food too. Not by choice, but because their shrunken little stomachs can't stand it. This donation is backhanded at best.

When the square clears out, I make my way down. Talk to the ones who treat me differently only because I'm growing up, and not because they want to touch me or kiss me or worse.

"Your dad's lucky he had a son instead of a daughter," says Hurley Mouette who fixes leaky boats for a living and has four girls, all close to my age and all kind of beautiful. They have blonde hair and freckles. And even the little one attracts a lot of attention.

I guess he's right about my dad being lucky. Poor Hurley already has to sleep with one eye open. I can't imagine what he'd do if he saw any of them on television, with strange men's hands on their young bodies. My dad doesn't like it, but he's not too worried about me getting hurt either.

Hurley's known me since I was a little kid, and he likes me enough. But he's broad shouldered and strong, and he'd kill me if he knew I kissed his oldest and prettiest daughter, Joleen, before any of this happened.

I'd never kiss Joleen again now, and not just because of her dad. Hardly any of the victors I've met are married, and I wonder if this is why. I can't imagine kissing someone nice like Hurley Mouette's daughter after the things that I've done. The Capitol ruined me. I'd ruin her. Instead, she'll marry a sailor or a fisherman. She'll have her pick, and hopefully she'll find someone who will take care of her. It's just what people do here. They find the people their lives are better with than without, and they get married. Providing that they don't live in the Victor's Village, that is.

I doubt I'll ever get married. I haven't yet decided if that's something that bothers me. But to go around kissing and sleeping with girls who I know I'll never have anything serious with… that's something they do in the Capitol. It's something guys who don't have fathers like mine do to get ahead. I won't let that be me.

I find a man selling oysters and buy a few to eat along the way. Then I comb the windy beach, eating oysters and pulling my expensive Capitol-made jacket tighter around my body, trying to imagine a girl I could marry. Someone who would live with me and sleep in my bed and not be afraid when I have nightmares about killing children. The last part would be enough to scare anyone away. I have everything I'd ever need to take care of a wife and a family. A big house. Money I'll be paid every month for the rest of my life. Access to anything else I could ever want. And still, I have less than nothing.

I am nothing.

The tears that form in my eyes have nothing to do with the stinging wind. On and on I walk, watching the houses and the people along the coast, the boats beyond the waves. No one could ever love me. Except maybe Mags. I shake my head and bite the inside of my lip that's curved into a smile as my own voice in my head says the words. _It's too bad Mags doesn't have a granddaughter or something._

Maybe one day soon Mags will be able to bring home someone else. A girl, this time. And in the same unspoken way that all the victors understand each other, maybe she'll understand me.

I don't allow myself to get my hopes up too high, though. Even with us being a Career district, we're not going to be due for another victor for some time.

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_Poor Finnick. He's too young to be thinking so darkly. But I guess that's what the Capitol does to people._

_Reviews are my life right now. Leave some.  
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	5. Chapter 4

_A/N:_ _Thank you to everyone who has been keeping up with my work, especially _**Adrenaline Write**_ (I love you; please don't cry), _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Heart-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday**_, and all my friends over at Deviant Art. This story would be untouched from its original version and rotting in Microsoft Word if not for your kind words. You make me want to keep writing and keep making this story better.  
_

_Just so you know, chapters 5-8 are about ready to go, 9-12 are written but need serious editing, and 13 is in progress. I know. I'm a mess._

_And to my readers who are keeping a low profile... reviews help by letting writers know what works and what doesn't. So please, if you've been reading this or any other story and haven't reviewed yet, just swing by and say hi or something and let the author know that he/she is keeping your interest. In my case, I find that chapters find their way to completion a lot sooner when I know you're waiting for them._

_With that said... here is Chapter 4.  
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_Finnick isn't mine. You know the drill.

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**CHAPTER FOUR**_  
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It becomes my job to mentor the boy whose name is called on reaping day. It doesn't matter that I'm fifteen. My presence is requested in the Capitol.

Conrad Perchings is two years older than me and must weigh in at least two thirty. Compare that to my one hundred seventy pounds, and even with my experience, the fact that I'm responsible for this guy is a joke. I can't even call him a kid. As far as I'm concerned, Perchings is a man.

Mags. What she lacks in physical ability she makes up for with her years of knowledge. She develops strategies for my tribute as well as her own, a girl called Janis who's my age and easy enough on the eyes.

Being here, it's like I never left. Which is terrifying. I can feel these kids' eyes begging, _How did you do it? _But what can I possibly tell them? So I spend time with them, with all of them, because this is the only comfort I can offer. It makes winning seem attainable, which twenty-three out of twenty-four times will not be the case.

I'm surprised to find that the Capitol is less interested in me than it's been during my previous visits. I wonder if it's because they've already forgotten me or because they have their eyes on the fresh meat, which sounds terrible, but I'm sure that's the way they view all the tributes. That's not to say I'm entirely ignored. But even though they look at me and talk to me and let it be known that they want me, they don't touch. _Good._

Aside from the tributes, I do command the attention of one other group. Most of the mentors from the other districts make an effort to befriend me. Probably because they see my youth and think I'm scared, or because they know what I'm in for for the rest of my life and they feel sorry for me. Or maybe that's just what victors do.

Before I know it, it's time to go to the one Games-related area of the Capitol that I haven't seen. Games Headquarters is about as intimidating as the arena itself. There's a curved wall of screens in varying sizes which I can only assume will simultaneously broadcast feeds from different camera angles, with the fighting and dying undoubtedly earning the larger monitors. Filling the room and facing the wall of displays is a row of twenty-four stations, each with its own gadgets for controlling when and where the parachutes arrive, what seemingly useful yet ultimately pointless gifts they'll deliver. I'm just thinking that they should have a separate training area reserved for teaching mentors how to operate this array of gadgetry, and that it's amazing that District 3 doesn't have more victors for the simple reason that they must be the only ones who can figure out all these buttons, when Mags puts a frail arm around my shoulder.

"Not so bad," she assures me.

_No, but you've been doing this for over fifty years_, I think but don't say. Because even though I'm frustrated, deep down I know she'll help me. Otherwise, she wouldn't be here. She's giving me time to acquaint myself with the controls so I don't have to feel entirely useless once this begins.

I try to get a handle of everything before me. I put in the earpiece that makes no sound. Look at the screen that displays no words or pictures. I'm about to give up on it altogether when a message pops up on my monitor. "It's voice-activated. Tell it what you'd like to look up." I look to Mags's station, but she hasn't received the same message. I'm puzzled enough to spin my chair around in search of the sender. A guy with glasses from District 3 barely catches my eye before his gaze returns to his own station. _Why would he help me? _I'm guessing that maybe victors do work together, that interstation messages wouldn't be allowed if this wasn't common practice. But then another thought crosses my mind. Interstation messages aren't encouraged or probably even allowed, except possibly among allies. This guy from District 3, he figured out a way through the system.

I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to speak into the headset or the monitor itself, so I just say, "trident" loud enough for both of them to hear me. About fifty different models of different materials, weights, and lengths light up the screen. My reflection in the shine informs me that my jaw has actually dropped. Under each trident, the word "unavailable" flashes in red block lettering. Prices are listed in gray. And even the cheapest model is more than most could afford. I know the prices will only escalate. I can't decide if it makes matters better or worse that there's also a space where I can see how much money has been pooled toward the total cost of each item, which of course right now is zero for every last one. That will change though, once the games begin.

As Claudius Templesmith announces the start of this year's death match, more icons appear around the edges of the screen. Before I can figure out that I have no idea how to access them, the guy from District 3 informs me that it's a touch-screen. I tap one icon and am brought to a menu of available items which again, at least for now, total at zero. The tap of another icon brings me to the items for which sponsors are pooling money. Another brings me to profiles of the sponsors themselves.

It's a lot to take in. So much so that, once I see that the District 4 tributes have made it away from the initial bloodbath unharmed, I give my full attention to continuing to work out the controls. Already, I've got bread and water to send them.

I'm ready to send both for Janis and Perchings to share when Mags stops me. It's a while before I realize that this might be all I have to send, that not every kid gets as much as I did. Another reminder that District 4 won't likely bring home another victor anytime soon.

Mostly I focus my attention on the endless selection of items sponsors have the option to buy. It beats watching the Games and remembering that only a year ago, I was the heartless killer. I search terms like _sword _and _armor_ and _shelter_. Scan the prices of things our tributes will never receive. And I actually miss it when two days in, Perchings missteps and sets off a swarm of muttation insects.

Mags reaches over, attempts to obscure my view. But it doesn't matter. The largest of the ones on the wall shows me the things that tear through his flesh, exposing muscle and bone. I'm frantic. Trying to figure out so many things when time is clearly running out. How I can sign myself up as a sponsor, how I can send one of the thousands of drugs brought up by the search term "pain." Mags tries to calm me, but she's so tiny and old. She takes over the controls. You can tell that most of the other victors actually feel sorry as I'm dragged, screaming, out of the room.

My mind cries all the things my mouth can't articulate as I watch the screens on my way out. C_an't you see that he's dying? I don't care about the rules. Send him medicine. Send him death. Stop that boy from screaming and writhing in agony. _I suppose a cannon fires. I suppose Mags gives the okay that she'll look after Janis without my help. Because I'm allowed to watch the rest of the Games from my room on the fourth floor.

I add Perchings to the list of children dead by my hand. When Janis dies too, Mags is at my side.

Like a parent explaining something to a child too young to understand the dangers of the world, Mags comforts me in her normal murmuring, tells me that I didn't kill that boy. In death, even Perchings was only a child. Mags tells me that, even if I'd seen it coming before it happened, I would have been helpless. That victors can't be sponsors, that we're the richest people in our districts, and we can afford a lot of gifts, and that of course we're not allowed to buy them.

"They never get what they need," she says simply.

No. Not like I did. It's amazing, even when you consider my looks, how easy I got off.

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_Probably my least favorite chapter, but a necessary one. Now it's on to the good stuff.  
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	6. Chapter 5

_A/N:_ _Thank you to all of my readers, especially _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Heart-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday**_, and my friends at Deviant Art._

_I posted Chapter Four basically in the middle of the night, so if you haven't read that one, go do that first._

_**Mockingjay spoilers** in this one and pretty much from here on out. Be warned.  
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_You know what's mine and what's not.  
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**CHAPTER FIVE**

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President Snow wishes me a happy birthday in person the year I turn sixteen. Dad's in town, buying a cake or a present or something I guess, when I wake up and find the old man sitting in a chair next to my bed. I should be terrified or at least startled, but even the president is a welcome sight after my nightmares.

Anyway, Mags warned me this would happen.

"Morning," I say. I'm glad my voice doesn't crack or anything. Because even when I'm not nervous it does that a lot lately.

"Good morning, Mr. Odair. And a happy birthday to you." I should say thanks, but something about the way he says my name renders me unable to speak. "Sixteen years old," he remarks. "Some would say that makes you a man."

_Some would say that happened when I was fourteen. When I won the Games and lost my virginity to one of your Capitol whores_, I want to say. But it doesn't really seem appropriate, given that this is the president we're talking about.

"I have a business proposition for you," he says. He talks about how everyone in all of Panem loves me. How it was no accident that someone as charismatic as me won the Games. How my father must be so proud. I can't ignore the tingling, uneasy sensation at the back of my neck. He sounds like he wants me to be a politician or something. Like maybe he's even decided that I shouldn't be a mentor, since he seems to like me so much and I'm obviously not a good mentor at all. Like maybe he wants to make me an escort or something.

Heh. The last bit is actually close to the truth.

I haven't had a lot of time to process this. Mags waited until a week ago to tell me. I was furious at first. It took me until I left her house and crawled crying into my bed that I realized that she only waited because she was protecting me. What good what it have done, me knowing and being angry and terrified before I had to be? As always, she did the right thing.

She called me to her house under the pretext of requiring some errand. She's always buying useless things in town, spreading her wealth among those who could use the help, and she usually needs me to help her bring the stuff in the house and find space for all of it. Then she sat me down and said, "There's something you should know."

She did it gently enough. Her description of a Capitol that gets what it wants meshed well enough with my understanding. But then she brought up something uncomfortable, something we'd only spoken of once before and even then, just barely. "Finnick, do you remember that girl?"

The distaste with which she said it made it clear that she could only mean Luxuria. "Yeah," I said, with equal abhorrence.

"She's not the only one. There are others just as eager to get to you."

Like a child who thinks he's a man, I told her it didn't matter. I wasn't going to make the same mistake again.

"My dear," she said with pain in her eyes, "you're not going to be given a choice."

There's a place where the cliffs that overlooks the ocean have a ledge that's not too high to safely jump from. I went there with some of my older cousins when I was little. This was probably only a summer or two after my mom died. Halfway to the water, I panicked. Twisted. Hit the surface belly first. Pain. And then blackness. When the weight of Mag's words hit me, it was with this same pressure.

I watched my hands turn to fists that wished for a trident. Wisely, Mags leaned away in case I decided to overturn the table. My breathing turned to that of someone who has stayed underwater too long. Fast and rough and painful. When I regained the ability to speak, my voice was a growl. "And if I don't?"

Mags's eyes, filled to the brim with tears, met my overflowing ones and she shook her head almost undetectably, unable to say what she knew and I had already guessed. They'd come after my father first. And then, because they know she's half my family, they'd come after Mags.

I nod my head, urging the president to continue, to get this over with as quickly and painlessly as possible.

"The next Games are set to begin in a few months' time. You will come to the Capitol. And you will personally thank those sponsors who are responsible for your receiving the trident in the arena. Your services will be considered paid for by said trident, while future transactions will be compensated at the time they are made."

President Snow examines me. He's trying to figure out whether I catch his meaning. I'm suddenly aware that I'm still in bed, tangled in the sheets after a night of thrashing. In only my boxer shorts. I won't let myself show how upsetting all of this is, so I replace shame with anger and ball my hands into fists. This makes President Snow smile.

"Do you know what happens to those who… _disagree_ with my plans?" No, but I have a pretty good idea. "Bad things happen, Mr. Odair. And I think you'll agree that it would be quite a tragedy to have such _things_ happen to you. Do you agree, _Finnick_?"

There's no hiding the fear I feel when he says my name. So I do something incredibly stupid and tell him, "I'm only sixteen, President Snow," in what comes out sounding like a child's voice.

He laughs. Like we're old friends or something. Then he says, "And yet age was hardly an issue during your victory tour."

So there's someone else besides me and Luxuria and Mags who knows what happened. It makes my stomach turn, knowing that he knows. Which is ludicrous by comparison, considering why he's here in my bedroom.

"Pedophilia isn't something we tolerate in the Capitol. Our friend from the party learned that the hard way when I cut out her tongue." He barely pauses to give me a chance to contemplate this before he says, "Do we have an agreement, Mr. Odair? Or do other arrangements need to be made?"

"No. I'll do it," I tell him, sentencing myself to metaphorical death and sparing my loved ones a physical one. I bury my face in my pillow as the president leaves, and I try to convince myself that I chose correctly. I end up punching and bending and destroying my wrought iron headboard before tossing it out the window.

When my dad comes home, he gives me the gift of not asking questions. It's the best birthday present I could ask for.

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_Whoa. Who knew writing President Snow would be so much fun? This one is actually one of my favorites, though I'm entirely unsure why. Sixteen-year-old Finnick is a more angsty but equally fun to write._

_Let me know what you think!  
_


	7. Chapter 6

_A/N: Who thinks that Finnick needs a moment of peace after these last few chapters? I do!_

_Something a little different. Like Finnick, I need a break from the chaos. And I know _**Adrenaline Write **_does too.  
_

_Thank you to all of my fabulous readers who have stuck with this story and read every chapter. And I'm working on getting some parachutes of the non-explosive variety to all my wonderful reviewers (_**Adrenaline Write**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**, **jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Heart-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday **_and of course, my friends at Deviant Art). I'm thinking sugar cubes for all. Seriously, you guys, this story wouldn't be anything near what it is now if not for your support. I can't thank you enough._

_Suzanne Collins owns Finnick, the Capitol, and District 4._

_Enjoy.

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**CHAPTER SIX**_  
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_For as long as I can remember, saltwater has been a source of comfort. Tomorrow, I will return to the Capitol. Today is for the sea.

There's a place that's popular among the young couples of District 4. All the teenage boys bring their girlfriends to the natural pool, a twenty-foot-deep section of ocean encased by sharp rocks that keep out prying eyes. Small fish swim through the cracks, lose sight of the way out, and grow too big to escape. Even a kid who didn't win the Hunger Games for his skill with a trident would have no trouble getting plenty of fish here. But no one touches the fish. Because combined with the multi-colored plants and the water and the sand and the rocks, they make this place beautiful. I'm sure lots of kids my age have crossed the line into adulthood at the pool.

How appropriate that I should come here now.

School and work are in session and, even if they weren't, the frigid air and water would be enough to keep everyone else away. I'm taking full advantage of this by swimming naked. Because next time I strip down, I won't have the pleasure of being alone.

The only way to get to the pool is up and over the rocky mountain that makes up something of a natural barrier of District 4. Over the rocks lies the pool. Just beyond the pool, a solid cement wall too high and too smooth to climb. Out of the ocean's reach lies the line of the electric fence. The water is guarded by duel-functioning lighthouses/watchtowers. But even the snipers can't see me or any of the other kids who come here. And if they did, they'd leave us alone. No one who comes here is trying to escape.

Except for me. But the Capitol and its snipers aren't much interested in figurative escapes either.

I slosh the ocean around my mouth, wanting but knowing better than to take it in. When it warms, I spit it out in a fountain. My body submerges itself and comes up with a new, cold mouthful. I could do this all day.

You're supposed to equalize yourself when you dive. I know this. Everyone knows this. It's one of those things we're born with in District 4. But I ignore sixteen years of nature today, and descend. The pressure pounds against my ears but I ignore it. I pick up a starfish. Propel myself and the creature to the surface. The pain eases, and I'm annoyed to find that it hasn't had the desired effect of drowning out everything else in my head.

I chuck the starfish across the pool and take up some weird dance of somersaults and twists. I refuse to answer the questions of how many will there be and what will they want from me and will they hurt me that press out from inside my skull.

When I know I'm at risk for hypothermia, yet another suffering of District 4's poor, who brave colder than this in order to eat, I climb up the narrow area where the cold stone is smooth and retrieve my clothes from the ledge. My frozen feet guide me to Mags and my father, who already have dinner underway. Tonight, we will have a feast. For my dad, it will be something to hold on to in my absence over the coming weeks. For me, it's the grand sort of meal afforded to the rich and famous brand of criminals before they are publicly executed. For Mags, a last chance to see me smile.

For the sake of these two people who love me, I will make the best of this dinner and of tomorrow and of the hell to come.

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_Short and sweet and nowhere near as dark as what's been and what's to come. Also, because some of you have been wondering, this story will stay T-rated. And Annie will be introduced in Chapter 9._

_Thank you for reading, and if you can, please review. Thanks!_


	8. Chapter 7

_A/N: _**The Other Perspective**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**, **jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Heart-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday**_, and my friends at Deviant Art... you guys rock my world. Seriously._

_If you've been reading this story, thank you! And if you can, please leave some feedback. I'd love to hear your thoughts, good or bad._

_This chapter contains some adult language (one f-bomb) and themes (uh... it's 16-year-old Finnick in the Capitol... you figure it out) , but nothing too graphic for the T rating I have no intention of breaking. Even if Finnick is a whore, he's a classy one. He's not going to share the gross details._

_Here goes nothing..._

_

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**CHAPTER SEVEN**

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**Maybe this is why there are so many options in the Training Center showers. How else could I possibly find comfort this night?

Mags knocks on my door for the third time in what feels like an hour but has likely been closer to five minutes. Opening ceremonies are over and I failed to make an appearance. Now Mags is checking to see that I'm still alive in here. I tell her I'm okay, but there's so much pain evident in my voice. I try to find solace in the fact that it's over, which of course is a lie. Tonight is over, but there's always tomorrow. Next week. Next year. Every year, probably until I die.

At least I'm done owing people, which in itself is a joke. My body is young and strong, and I've spent my life training for endurance. In one day, I've paid my debt for the trident. From now on, they'll owe me. But owed or paid, it doesn't matter. I have no choice in this. I guess I should be grateful that more people didn't contribute to my victory two years ago. But I can't help but wish that some of the ones who did would have just saved their money and let me die instead.

I'm retching again, but by now there's nothing but yellowish bile to come up. Forehead pressed against the shower floor, body still in the fetal position, I spit and let the warm water wash the acidic substance away. I think of the others, the ones who have been doing this for years. The ones who have altered their bodies in order to keep up with the younger, more beautiful ones like me. The ones who didn't get their lips plumped, their breasts lifted, and were subsequently disposed of. I wonder what fate awaits me.

I try to move to assess the damage, but I'm too much of a mess. I let my mind register and identify the pain in shifts. Bruises where they pinned my arms down, where they kissed my neck and shoulders until it hurt. Bite marks on my stomach and thighs. The scratches I briefly wore as medals in another life. Even when I block out the worst parts of the image, it's hard to imagine that I'll have anyone lining up for my battered body anytime soon.

What I really need is water I can swim in.

I can't remember turning off the water, pulling on a robe, or crawling from the bathroom. But somehow, I've accomplished all three. Who can say how much time has passed? All I'm aware of is Mags, guiding me out of my room and sitting me down on the bed in hers. Pushing my dripping hair away from my bloodshot eyes. In this moment, I'm sure that she loves me more than anyone else ever has or will. "Won't be so bad anymore," she tells me. "Can't do anything else to hurt you now."

I must fall asleep eventually, and some higher power has the grace not to send any nightmares. They bring me back to Beauty Base Zero the following morning. But President Snow has the grace to keep my suitors at bay for the rest of the training period. Probably knows my body can't handle it. Wouldn't want his dear friends to have me at anything less than peak-performance level. Whatever. I'm grateful anyway.

He was right though, about me being a man now. Because even with everything, I command everyone's attention in Games Headquarters. And not it's not because they feel bad for me, the screaming boy of last year's Games, the newest of our president's whores. These eyes, these acknowledging nods, say they're glad to see I'm holding up.

The kid whose life is my responsibility, that's the one thing over which I have any control. It's not much, but it's all I have. I stay up all night, watching the arena, timing my gifts. Mags brings me coffee, something I've never had. The lone mentor from District 12 shares a clear liquid that numbs my pain but slows my reflexes too. I turn it away after my first try; I need to hold on to what little control I have. District 6 offers the gift of morphling which I accept but don't ingest. Our healers at home might be able to use it. Instead I find comfort in sucking on sugar cubes in between coffees, crunching their perfect forms into powder that dissolves into a sweet aftertaste. We're in it until the last couple of days, until right around the point when the Careers turn on each other. A kid from District 2 gets the crown.

And it's over. It's fucked up, I know. But I feel like celebrating. I'm sure they'll drag me to back here for this kid's Victory Tour, but that's only one night and it's months away. Other than that, I'm free for another year.

On the train home, I inspect my body. The angry red and purple marks have faded to shadows. I'm thinner than I'm used to seeing myself from too much coffee and nothing to eat but sugar. But I look good. More than a man. A sex symbol, a playboy, yes. Just what President Snow wanted. But there's something more too. I'm dangerous. Because before all of this, Snow groomed me into something else too. I am a killer. And I'll find a way to turn this all against him.

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_Ugghh that was torturous to write. Leave a review and make me feel better. Or worse. Your call.  
_


	9. Chapter 8

_A/N: __Huge thank you to _**SQUISHPIE**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**, **jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Hearts-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday**_, my friends at Deviant Art, and everyone else who's been read my work up until this point.  
_

_Chapter 7 was posted in the middle of the night. Make sure you read that first._

_This was actually one of the first chapters I wrote, and even though I've done a lot of editing, this one has remained virtually untouched. I guess we'll see how well that worked out for me. I'm not really sure where this one even came from, but it felt right and it sort of just came out._

_Anything you recognize is the intellectual property of Suzanne Collins.

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_

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

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**"You have no idea what kind of hell I've been through." I'm still sixteen. And I've just hit my father.

You can tell he's shocked. Because even though I really didn't hit him all that hard, he goes kind of off balance. Fear flickers in his eyes, but it's quickly replaced by something else. Pain.

"Dad," I start. But what can I say? I can hardly tell him that he's at the top of the president's list of people to slaughter if I don't play his little game. And I'm too angry to tell him I'm sorry. Why did he have to get on my case about this? I hadn't even thought of what the footage would do to my father. Me, looking handsome as ever. A line outside my door. It's not below the Capitol to show the rest, but thankfully, nothing too graphic gets aired. Not because they want to protect me or my privacy. No. They don't care about me. It's to protect the ones I'm forced to have sex with, who like Luxuria, might be pushing things too far. Pushing _me _too far.

The only thing my father knows is that his son has been making rounds in the Capitol. And it's more than enough.

All he had to do was ask what my mother would say, if only she could see me. I couldn't control it. Anger and shame threw my fists into my father's chest.

In that moment, I hated him. But more than that, I hated myself for not having anything to say. Because he was right, and I found myself glad that my mother had died and never had to see this. Glad that the tiny brother I never got to hold or even see died with her before the Capitol could turn us into some sick brothers act.

"You're sixteen," he says. He's calmer now. Still trying to catch his breath. "Half those woman look old enough to _be_ your mother." And then finally, "I thought I'd taught you something about respect."

It makes me even more furious. I can't stop myself. "I didn't choose this, Dad." His eyebrows wrinkle quizzically. I have to remind myself that he doesn't know. "It's not my fault my name was pulled from the reaping ball," I say. Damage control. "Respect wasn't going to get me out alive."

Then my dad says that he's sorry. I've actually tricked him into thinking he's the one who should be apologizing.

I shake my confused head and leave the house, desperately needing air and salt. But the footage has changed the girls and women of the district too. I can tell by the way they look at me that something has changed. It takes me a while to realize they all think that I consider myself to be too good for them. Some of them have had eyes on me since before I won and I've done nothing about it. Now they're watching replays of me bringing woman after woman into my room in the Capitol. Women with fake breasts and dyed skin and all kinds of ugly things that some people think are really beautiful. Now nearly everyone in District 4 thinks I'm one of those people.

The rest will try harder than ever to sleep with me.

Fantastic.

I spend the rest of the month failing at reassembling my life. I try to do things with my father. Try to ignore the fact that things will never be the same for us again. I invite Mags out on the boat with us for a day of fishing, because she's the link between home life and Capitol life, and because I doubt she's able to get a boat out on the water without help these days.

It's still funny to watch my dad and Mags together because her speech is becoming more and more garbled and it seems I'm the only one who ever knows what she's saying. Add that to the fact that she's… well, what can you say about someone who scoops half the food off her plate and drops it on yours, and then takes what she wants from your plate and eats it without a word? Because that's what Mags does when we set our poles and fill the waiting time with lunch. I laugh. Because what else is there to do?

"Hey, what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine. Right Mags?" I say.

My dad doesn't laugh, though. I don't think he really knows what to do with me.

Mags says something she means for my dad to hear, but I have to translate and tell him that she said that I'm a good boy. My dad purses his lips and the intensity of his glare burns like the sun. Before the Games, he knew this to be true. Now he's not so sure.

Finally, he decides, "I guess you're right, Mags. Even if I don't agree with everything he does, he is a good boy." Then he tells Mags about how I bought him this boat with my initial winnings. About how I was strong when my mom's pregnancy started making her sick. How I told bedtime stories about fishermen and giant sea monsters to her and the baby in her belly. He tells Mags that I'm all he has.

I wonder if he's really saying all of this for Mags, or if it's more that he wants me to hear it and remember that I really am a good person. Because ever since I hit him, I can't forgive myself for any of the terrible things I've done of late.

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_Again, not really sure where any of that came from. Hope you enjoyed it. Please review!_


	10. Chapter 9

_A/N: Ohmygosh. Such a hectic day. I got called for an interview this morning, and after that and grocery shopping, I ended up having to take my dog to the hospital. So I just got home and rushed through editing this so that I could post at least one chapter today. It's not my favorite chapter, but it shows another part of life in District 4, which is something we haven't seen a lot of yet. And we get to see Annie. _

_Thank you everyone who has provided feedback so far_**_:_ SQUISHPIE**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**, **jensonluvsu**_, _**My-Hearts-Storm**_, _**WindxClubrox23**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Stranded Star**_, _**windyday**_, and my friends at Deviant Art._

_You know what's mine and what isn't. Enjoy.  
_

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**CHAPTER NINE**

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I haven't had to go to school since the year I won, but this year I'm bored and desperate enough to make a reappearance. I need to get out. Not to the beach or to town or to the pool. I need to get out and do something that makes me feel like I'm not just wasting time. So I offer my services as a trainer. This will be my life from now on. Train for the Games. Go to the Games. Lose the Games. Come home.

It's been months and things are still awkward at home.

Okay, so technically the kids are training for jobs, boating, fishing, crabbing, weaving, everything really. But who in District 4 hasn't already been trained for those jobs since birth? And what job requires children to use weapons against people instead of sea creatures? We are Careers, and what we have is actually a larger scale version of the Capitol's Training Center, where all children eligible for the reaping are allowed to practice and develop skills. Various tradesmen from the District volunteer their time. Depending on who volunteers each year, stations can range from finding and preparing food to stringing up traps. Healing wounds to using weapons. Everyone, including my dad and Mags and Hurley Mouette and even my mom when she was still alive, has done this at some point or another. Now it's my turn.

Three ages are permitted to train each day. Sunday is 12, 14, and 17. Monday is 13, 15, and 18. Wednesday is 14, 16, and 12 again. On and on, so that each age group trains for exactly three days a week. Twelve-year-olds only ever practice with other twelve-year-olds. Each of the three age groups to train on any given day has three hours. One for body-building—running, swimming, weight lifting. One for survival skills. One for weapons. That's where I come in.

It's annoying how quickly my first twelves lesson fills with bright-eyed girls, eager to get a closer look at Finnick Odair. They're too young to know any better. Hardly any of them can even hold a trident properly by the end of an hour. None of them can throw one. And the ones who manage to spear the dummy can't retrieve the weapon from its sand-filled chest afterward. If mine is the only lesson they get before entering the arena, none of them will survive.

My next lesson with the fourteens isn't much better; a quick survey of the training area confirms that only about ten or so of the girls are using other stations. That means I've nearly all of them, along with a few lost-looking boys who actually care about learning to wield a trident, here.

The twelve-year-olds were one thing. They have no business being in any situation where they need these skills. I can forgive them for being entirely incapable. But I won my Games at fourteen. I knew what I was doing. These girls are either clueless or they're simply pretending to be so that I can put my hands over theirs and teach them how to do this right. I don't know which would be worse. If they're clueless and they're picked, they're dead. But if they're actually good at this and they're letting lust subtract from valuable training time, then they're stupid. And if they're picked, they're dead.

My day concludes with seventeen-year-olds. At least these kids take me seriously, probably because they know they have a higher chance of being picked. Maybe some of them even hope to volunteer. But if everyone who ever planned on volunteering actually went through with it, someone would have taken my place and I wouldn't be doing any of this. Again, I'm put into the situation of training kids who are older and bigger and stronger than I am. But this time, none of that matters. With this one skill, I'm the best there is. I may not have their respect, but I at least have their attention.

I'm thoroughly exhausted when a bell finally indicates that the last hour has ended. But at the same time, I'm not ready to go home. Instead, I find myself lounging in a hammock that I hope was woven by the station's master and not the less-adept fingers of some of the kids I've seen today. One question plays through my mind. _How on earth am I ever going to bring home another victor?_

These kids are so innocent. I'm not even sure what that means to me anymore. Innocence. When did I lose mine? In the arena? After? I don't know. But I know that I can't remember the last time I laughed with my friends the way these kids do now. I can't even remember having kids my age who cared about me, and not just because it's nice to be one of Finnick Odair's friends. The handful of kids who linger after the bell, their laughter is real. I can't help but envy them as they take turns showing each other different grips and techniques, and ultimately impaling the dummy with a trident. These are the kids who didn't want to be part of the larger group. Probably they think they're too good to associate with the riffraff. Or maybe they just can't stand me.

The girl's long curly hair should be the first feature that distinguishes her from her male companions, but she's so petite and girly that she'd probably stand out anyway. She has to be one of the fourteen-year-olds. One of the boys stands behind her, wraps his arms around her tiny body, and does what's supposed to be my job and shows her how to hold the thing the right way. She laughs and shrugs him off. And before she leaves, the girl positions the trident next to the dummy and uses her finger to draw an invisible smile across its blank face.

I don't want her to get picked on reaping day. I don't want any of them to get picked. I don't want to go to the Capitol anymore. I don't want to fight with my dad.

When the kids are gone and only a few volunteers remain, I unstring the hammock. It's strong and comfortable, and I want to hang it in my yard or my house or something. I don't think I'm supposed to take it, either, but no one stops me from carrying it out through the double doors in a tangled ball. The things I don't want may be out of my control, but the hammock is just another reminder that I'll never want for anything. And if I were any of these kids, I'd hate me too.

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_Not thrilled with it, but whatever. It's been a long day and at this point, it feels good to post anything. _

_Going to try to get ahead in editing tonight so I'll still be on track in the event of further complications. Again, if you haven't read my other stories, please check them out. And if you've taken the time to read all 9 chapters, please take the extra two minutes to write a review and let me know what you think of the story so far or my writing style, or anything really._

_Thanks! See you in Chapter 10!  
_


	11. Chapter 10

_A/N: This chapter is a huge turning point in the story for more than one reason._

_Thank you to everyone who has stuck with this story, especially my faithful reviewers who, chapter after chapter, have let me know what they love about this story and what I've brought to these characters. _**KRK the JRK**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**caisha702**_, and _**The Other Perspective**_, __your honest and insightful feedback has made this story what it is. I trust that you'll let me know what you think of the decisions I made in this chapter._

_Characters. Places. Not mine. Blah blah blah._

_

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**CHAPTER TEN**

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My dad was nineteen when I was born. He had my mom, who was twenty-one. A small but good-sized house. A tiny fishing boat that probably wasn't worth anything to anyone but him. They didn't have a lot, but they had it all.

I have everything, and I have nothing. At nineteen, I'm nothing like my father was at this age. I'm nothing like myself, either.

Slender fingers wrap themselves like serpents around my shoulder. Their owner brushes her lips against my cheek. Tickles my ear with her tongue. I'm a whore, bought and sold to the highest bidder. I don't do this for the money or the fame. Like my fellow victors, I do this to survive.

The Capitol assigns the roles. The friendly drunk. The raging alcoholic. The nurturers like Mags, the distant ones whose own children were reaped and killed. Young, handsome, wanted me. Skeletons dripped in wax who sell themselves for drugs. And when we're young and naïve, we suffer and feel sorry for ourselves. There are those like District 4's own Pisces, who won the Games only to gauge out his own eyes as a way of hiding from the horrors that come with winning. Sounds smart in theory. Until you realize his whole family was executed for his decision.

But we all have choices. Even me. I can do this because the president will personally kill my father and Mags and anyone else he thinks I could love if I don't. Or I can let this thing I hate, this thing I'm forced to do, become a game of my own.

"You want to get out of here?" I ask the purple-eyed mannequin of a woman who's got her hand on my shoulder. With all twelve chariots on their way, no one will pay much notice to our absence.

"I know a place," she breathes into my ear.

I walk with my hand on her ass as she leads the way. We're all such great pretenders.

Accepting this role left me with no control. Embracing it has given some of that control back. I don't wait for the queue outside my room. I seek them out, pretend I'm the one who wants this. I feign interest in their grotesque bodies and nonexistent personalities. I get to them before they can get to me.

The cameras will assume I was looking for a little spontaneity. Or maybe that I just couldn't contain myself. But as long as I let them catch me walking away with this shell of a woman, no one will ask questions.

At first, I took a hint from the morphling addicts and tried for things like jewelry and medicine and anything I could bring home. A feathered hairclip for Mags's collection of useless things. Painkillers that our healers can't afford. But those things didn't do much to help me or my cause. Which is still to get back at Snow.

This isn't the type of agenda that can be easily advertised. "Secrets for sex with Finnick Odair." It doesn't matter how much they adore me. I'd be shot on the spot. But as it turns out, the meetings that left me damaged weren't entirely futile. I know things. And knowing things is the kind of thing that will get you ahead in the Capitol.

We're pressed for time. She knows it. I know it. So she pushes me onto the floor as soon as we're inside her apartment just outside the City Circle. We remain, for the most part, dressed.

She rolls over next to me, needing to catch her breath when we're done. It's time to make my move.

"That was fantastic," I say into her ear. This voice I reserve for them, it comes out like a hiss. My own velvety homage of their affected accents. I ask her what's the most shocking thing she's ever heard. She giggles stupidly and tells me things I've experienced first-hand.

I laugh it off. Fiddle with her bracelet. She slides it off her wrist and onto mine. "That's not so crazy," I tell her. "Come on. Something real." I touch her cheek at the last word and hope it's enough.

She gets up and leaves the room. I pull my pants over my hips, buckle my belt. Run a hand through my hair. Examine the bracelet in the lamplight. It sparkles with green and purple gems whose names I know are amethyst and peridot. This is what spending so much time here does to a person.

When she comes back, she presses a slip of paper against my chest, her lips against my mouth. Her hand trails downward. I take the paper before it can reach its destination and I leave.

The last of the tributes, mentors, stylists and escorts are already getting into the elevators when I make my way inside the Training Center. I'm late.

The girl tribute from District 4, Annie, smiles and shakes her head as I put my hand between the closing doors and step in to join her for the brief ride to our floor. Not a smile that says she can't believe her good fortune at having me to herself. She's not embarrassed at knowing where I've been or the fact that she's dressed in a ridiculous mermaid costume either. Instead, it's like she finds something ironic in the terrible stroke of luck that landed her here with me.

"Can I help you?" I ask. Not in the velvety hiss, but as though I'm genuinely offended. She starts undoing the intricate plait holding her hair in place and actually rolls her eyes at me.

"Do you even care about Gannet?" Her voice is shaky. Whatever she's pretending, she's not as confident as she'd like to be.

I'm frustrated enough to tell her, "Why don't you worry about yourself? Training starts tomorrow and, seeing as I haven't seen you in training at all back home, I'm sure you need it."

The doors open and Annie shakes out the rest of her hair, which springs back in unruly curls, as she stomps down the hall to her room. And I remember that I _have_ seen her in training. At fourteen, she was already making every effort to avoid me. So much so that it took me until the day she was reaped to learn her name. And even then, I couldn't place it to my single memory of her. Until now. Annie.

She has been training. And she and Gannet score nines. High, but not dangerously so, at least not with some of their competition scoring above them. And when Mags and I send the tributes to bed so we can talk strategy with their stylists, it suddenly bothers me that they're planning on playing up Annie's natural beauty at tomorrow night's interview.

"No," I say. Everyone turns around because my voice is never this angry.

It takes some doing, especially since the outfits are pretty much done and everyone's reminding me how well the sex appeal thing worked out for me, but in the end, Mags gives in. And she even agrees to let me coach Annie while she coaches Gannet.

I make Annie hate me more when other obligations cause me to be late for our coaching session. Matters are made worse when I inform her of her change in strategy. "But I thought we were going for sexy? Wasn't that the point of the mermaid outfit? Isn't that how _you_ won?" Annie asks me, half teasing, half serious.

"When you win and they make you look half as good as me, we'll see." As I say it, I try to ignore the fact that she actually is kind of beautiful. And, even more painful, that she's not going to win. "For now, I need to see what else I can do with you."

She's smart. Really smart. Because about halfway through my trying to turn her into _funny_, she stops and looks at me in a way that makes me, Finnick Odair, uncomfortable.

"You know, you're not as disgusting as they make you out to be." She quickly adds, "But you're not as charming as you think you are either." Then she circles me, taking me in as though our roles are reversed. "There's something," she says, wrinkling her brow, "only I'm not sure what it is." She looks at me a while longer and I wonder if she suspects that I'm paid to be this person they've made me, because then she drops the subject and, with it, her hostility.

So Annie does smart which really isn't a stretch at all, and Gannett, who couldn't be sexy if he had surgery for it, does brutal, which turns out well. I'm annoyed at first but relieved later when lingering too long in another stranger's apartment makes me late again, this time to say goodbye to the tributes before hovercraft deliver them to this year's arena. Four years of doing this have taught me that it's better not to get attached.

They team up, without the other careers. Brains and muscle. Both get sponsors. And for the first time since I became a mentor, I allow myself to think District 4 might get another victor.

Until Gannett gets his head sliced off with one clean swing of an ax.

I don't know how Annie escapes, but she does. That night, I send her everything I was saving for Gannett. Food. Water. A decent jacket. Mags doesn't protest. It's the last year she's planning on being here with me, even though she really should have stopped mentoring the year I won. Win or lose, I'll be doing this with Isla next time around. So Mags lets me do what I want.

What does it matter anyway? There's no way this sniveling child is making it home.

For days, Annie just hides. Lets the bread I sent rot. Barely drinks. Shakes. I'm about to give up and leave Headquarters when the Gamemakers decide to make things interesting with an earthquake. But something goes wrong. That much is obvious. Because when the dam breaks, the ensuing flood takes out the ground cameras that were ill-prepared for the pressure of the crashing water. It's a while before they manage to get decent coverage from the air, and even the mentors are panicking because none of them can find their kids in the chaos.

On a normal day, Annie would have this in the bag. But she hasn't eaten. I tell myself this over and over, because my heart is still racing with the thought that she might win. Everyone's monitors turnover to a screen of flotation devices no one will be able to afford. By the time enough money is pooled for even one, most of these kids will have drowned.

No one bothers to even try to send anything. We just wait. Cannon after cannon after cannon. Each one brings new meaning. The slip of paper I promised myself I wouldn't read until I was outside the Capitol, and how soon I won't have to wonder what it says. Cannon. After this, I'll be free of this place for several months. Cannon. If Annie wins, that won't matter; I'll become part of the traveling circus. Cannon. I don't care.

Finally the trumpets blare, and it takes Mags throwing herself into my arms for me to realize that it's over. And nothing else matters but the fact that we're finally bringing a kid home.

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_Defintely channeling the Finnick Katniss meets in Catching Fire in the beginning of this one. Hope you all liked Annie in this one. She'll be a main character from this point forward, so look forward to even more of her in the chapters to come._

_And as always, please review. Hearing from you guys makes my life, and I always write back._

_P.S. I'm posting this from my kindle from in the car. (Don't worry... I'm not driving!) So apologies if it's not my best editing job, but I wanted to post it fairly early in the day.. _


	12. Chapter 11

_A/N_: _I'm so glad that everyone who reviewed likes my take on Annie. There will be a lot more of her in coming chapters._

_Thank you to _**KRK the JRK**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**The Other Perspective**_,_ **TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu **_for taking the time to review, and of course to you for reading._

_Just having fun with the characters. No copyright infringement intended. Enjoy!

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**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

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**There are no replays of Annie's interview back at home. No shots of her during the Banquet. No one wants to relive this crazy girl's ordeal. It's been months and she still isn't talking.

I feel bad saying it, but I haven't even really spent time with Annie since she's been home. I helped her parents and brother and sister move their stuff to their new home in the Victor's Village. I've brought them food on occasion, because dad always cooks much more than what he, I, and Mags can eat. But for the most part, I've sat on the sidelines while that girl has drifted further and further off to sea.

It's not like I can pretend to be her friend. I can't pretend to know what she's going through. I won by killing. She won by surviving. I feel bad for her. I haven't lost so much of myself that I can't feel compassion. I feel terrible for the poor girl. But it annoys me too, this whole crazy act she has going on. Annie will never have to live with the fact that she killed innocent children, or any of the other awful shit I'm reminded of when I look in the mirror. If anyone should be crazy, it isn't her.

But just as I was deemed sexy and am forced to pay for that with sex, Annie was smart. She's paying with her mind.

With the Victory Tour less than two months away, I can hardly spend time with Mags without Annie coming up in conversation. Today is no different.

"Girls like you," she tells me. Not this one, but I let her continue. "She'll talk to you." Doubtful.

I've contemplated telling Mags what I know. Or at least what I might know. Some people will say anything to gain my favor. But if my information is correct, it would be enough to distract Mags from trying to get me to do this thing that clearly makes me uncomfortable. I'm not good at this kind of thing. Mags is the caretaker among us. And she's Annie's mentor, anyway. But she's hell-bent on me being the one to talk to the girl. And I'd never risk Mags's safety by telling her what I've heard about President Snow.

"Mags, you like me and you talk to me," I correct her. "But even Dad only tolerates me at this point. What can I possibly say to that girl?"

"She likes you better than she likes me," Mags mumbles. This isn't necessarily true either, but I do know that Annie had a stronger connection with me than she ever did with Mags. Not a positive connection, but a connection nonetheless.

"And again, what can I possibly say to her?" I don't know why I bother asking. Mags doesn't have the answer. And by now, we both know I'm going to go see Annie. As soon as I figure out what I'm supposed to say.

I remember wishing that we'd get a new victor. A male who could take my place. A female who'd love me as Mags does. I was terribly naïve as a boy.

I end up going to Annie's as soon as I leave Mags's because I know myself well enough to know that if I go home, I'll end up having the same conversation with Mags again in the morning. Mr. Cresta is understandably hesitant about letting me up to Annie's room to see her. I'd question any father who let me into his daughter's bedroom without a certain amount of reluctance. But when I tell him it's to do with the Victory Tour, he leads me up the stairs.

The room that's Annie's is in the same place my room is in the house I share with my father. I knock, but Mr. Cresta just opens the door for me and watches cautiously as I enter. Our rooms are in the same location in our houses, but the similarities end there. Over Annie's large bed is an intricately woven canopy. On the floor, woven mats. Woven curtains over the windows. It takes me a while to even notice Annie, who's fiddling with a length of rope I'm sure is too short to make anything. But if anyone could make something useful of such a small piece, she probably can.

"Annie, Finnick's here to see you." Mr. Cresta's words bring me back to the reality that this is a crazy girl whose room I'm in. Frankly, I'm surprised her father isn't afraid she'll make a noose, tie one end to the bed, and throw herself out the window.

I wish she would roll her eyes at the sound of my name. Do anything to let me know she's still in that pale, thin body whose hands are blistered from the rope she can probably weave into things even people in the Capitol would buy. At least Mags and I won't have to invent some pretend talent for Annie's tour.

But Annie will still need to be able to talk on camera. I guess that's where I come in.

And I realize, even if I can get her to roll her eyes, that's something. If anyone can evoke some reaction out of Annie, it's me, though not for the reasons most people would think. Of course, there's the problem of her dad being here and all. I can't really spew out my normal lines with him in distance of my vital organs.

No. I'll have to figure out another way.

I finger the canopy over the bed. "So is this where you spent all your training time? Avoiding me in the knot-tying station?" Her green eyes, which are almost exactly the same color as mine, shoot upward. There. Now if I can keep going. I know I have to tread lightly. Get a reaction? Yes. But upset her? I really don't want to do that.

_Nothing about the Games. Nothing about axes or swimming or even the gifts I sent her in the arena. _I can tell she's about to lose interest when I realize what I have to do. I have to make this about me. The part of me that she hates most. Isn't that the only thing we ever really taIked about before all of this?

I sit on the edge of the bed and lie back on it. "Wow," I say, and I don't have to pretend. It really is the most comfortable bed I've ever been on. I'm about to say as much even though I know this is pushing it, what with her father still standing guard in the doorway and all, when another voice cuts me off.

"Can I help you?" My words are repeated back to me in the same shaky voice from the elevator. She's not at all hoarse which leads me to believe she's been talking this whole time, only not for the cameras or for anyone outside her family, but still I'm stunned. So much so that I'm actually smiling.

Again, I'm frustrated by her ability to catch me so off guard. But I'm still smiling when I say, "Yeah, you can start talking to Mags so she can stop worrying about your stupid Victory Tour and start paying attention to me again." And because it's Annie and I think she knows how much I hate this whole arrangement with me and all my Capitol women, I add with sarcasm, "Anyway, none of my gorgeous girlfriends can get through on the phone with Mags tying up the line all day and night."

Annie puts her head down, shaking it. But she's smiling too. Another remnant from the elevator.

"You know, I may not be as charming as I think I am, but you're not as crazy as you think you are either," I say.

For a fraction of a second, she looks at me, lets me see her smile clearly, and then she goes back to fiddling with her rope. It doesn't matter. I know something has changed between us. We are victors and we are connected by something deeper than anything the Capitol can do to either of us. I think Annie and I will be friends. And like Mags, one day Annie will be my family.

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_Just some cuteness between Annie and Finnick while they continue to get to know and understand each other. Reviews are always fabulous! Next chapter (which is cuter, if I do say so myself, and darker) will be up tomorrow.  
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	13. Chapter 12

_A/N: Huge thank you to _**District12Victor**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**PK9**_, _**.17**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**The Other Perspective**_,_ **TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu **_for all of your feedback._

_I think the chapter-a-day pace I've been keeping is going to fade very quickly. I got called in for a bunch of job interview related stuff pretty much every day this week, which put me behind in my writing. If I get the job, I'll have even less time to write. But this story won't end! I will keep writing chapters until the story ends itself back at its beginning, and even then, I won't be done writing._

_This is another of the first chapters I wrote. Enjoy, and as always, thanks for reading!

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**CHAPTER TWELVE**

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**"Cloelia?"

"Shut up," she says.

"Catina?" I can't stop laughing.

"Stop."

"Is it Concordia?" This will never get old.

"Finnick."

"Oh, Annie," I surrender. "Sorry. That was my next guess." She laughs. "What's up, Annie?"

On the phone, when I can't see how thin and pale she is or the lost look she gets in her eyes, I always trick myself into thinking she's healed. Our friendship lives mainly in the underground telephone lines that connect our houses. It doesn't matter that I make her smile. Annie's dad still has every reason not to like me. I'm not really allowed at the house unless I have a specific reason for being there. But Annie and I talk on the phone every day, and when her dad and brother take the boat out for a few hours at a time, I sit in her living room with her and her mom and sister. One way or another, I'm always surrounded by women.

"My prep team is coming, and they went through the trouble of calling ahead to say that they'd love to see you."

"Of course they would," I say bitterly.

"Please?"

As if I have a choice. Oh well.

I pull on a thin sweater for the short walk to Annie's house. You can tell when I get there that her father isn't too thrilled about the fact that I even talk to his daughter on the phone. But I make Annie laugh, something no one else can do, so what choice does he have?

Her brother Adrian is a year older than me. The sister, Ariana, is a year younger than Annie. Had she been older, she might have taken Annie's place on reaping day. I can't help but sometimes wish this had been the case. But the mother is nice, and the father is tolerable enough. And it's nice to be around a family that's so whole. Not that I'm complaining about Dad and Mags or anything. Mags is a mother, grandmother, and friend all in one sloppily yet perfectly wrapped package. And Dad—well he's getting used to the way I've been forced to grow up.

Waiting while Annie gets her hair and skin and nails done should provide an opportunity for me to prove my worth to the men in her family. But instead, I'm forced to listen as District 4's escort, Camilla, attempts to do this for me. "It's not just the Capitol. All of Panem is in love with him. They'd bash each other's brains in for the chance to be with him." Well, it's a good thing I've got the best person on the job. "Which is why we'd like you to come along for Annie's Victory Tour," she says to me. "Won't it be something, seeing your fans in all the districts again?"

Yes, it will be something. But not a desirable something. You can tell that Mr. Cresta is as thrilled about the idea as I am. The only plus side to my going is that I'll be present to protect Annie.

So they make me pretty too. Rid me of the stubble that never seems to get a chance to become a beard. File the nails I've learned not to bite. Turn my hair into perfection.

Mags and I repeat the route through the districts, this time with Annie in tow. District 12. District 11. District 10. Annie should be the star, but it quickly becomes obvious why my presence was requested for the tour. I outshine her. No one cares about the mad girl. Not with Finnick Odair around.

On the train, I spend most of my time with Mags, but I spend time—I mean _actually_ spend time—with Annie for the first time too. It doesn't surprise me that she wakes up screaming like I do. There are plenty of nights when one of us comes into the dining car only to find the other already sitting there with a cup of coffee and the hope that caffeine will be enough to keep the nightmares at bay. We don't talk much but that's fine with me. It's harder to think of what to say when I have to look at her and be reminded that she's not a normal girl.

District 9, District 8, District 7.

Mags suggests filling the hours with a game she calls checkers. We use crackers and slices of fruit for the pieces. And soon we realize that I'd starve if I was only allowed to eat what I won from the game. I can't help it. I was never one for planning ahead. Not like Mags. So I get Annie to take my place, and I toy with her rope as I watch the two of them—Mags, whose mind is dulled by old age, and Annie, whose is clouded by memories of her Games—try to outsmart each other. But Annie gets tired quickly and often, and when she does, we're back to just me and Mags.

6, 5, skip 4, 3.

This is getting exhausting. I try to repress memories of my own tour as we grow nearer and nearer to the Capitol. To the party at President Snow's mansion, and to the admirer's I won't be allowed to turn away.

2. 1.

Detonate. The Capitol is an explosion of color and texture. Past victors gather at tables of their own, largely ignoring the feathered and freakish figures that fill the room. I don't have this luxury, not with women with eyelashes long enough to endanger my own eyes taking turns trying to pull me away from the party.

"I have another idea," I tell the first one who looks like she's already drunk enough to possibly offer my asking price. I pull her into the bathroom, because it's more suitable than a bedroom for this sort of tryst. While others in surrounding stalls purge themselves of delicious food and wine I won't get to taste, I purge myself of what little humanity and normalcy I've reclaimed in the sixth months since my last visit. Empty what's left of me into the Capitol and its women.

When I'm spent, two of the middle-aged victors from 11 and 12, Chaff and Haymitch—who are probably the two biggest drunks in our circle—pull me aside and supply me with drink after pungent, mind-numbing drink.

I spend the night alternately vomiting and crying into the toilet on the train, and when I wake, I find myself like a child in Mags's arms. Which is ridiculous since I'm twice her size. What will I do at the Seventy-First Games, when Mags will stay home with Annie while I play mentor with Isla?

"I thought I could do this," a voice that might be mine if not for its hoarseness tells Mags. "I thought it didn't bother me anymore."

She strokes my hair and says simply, "It's the girl."

I'm too tired and nauseous to question or argue. What I really need is a coffee, which unfortunately clashes terribly with my other chief necessity: a decent night's sleep. Since the first is readily available and the latter has ceased to exist, I head to the dining car where Annie pushes a piece of toast in my direction.

I splash cube after cube of sugar into the liquid I realize I have no intention of drinking. I've never been hungover or even drunk before, but I'm guessing that to walk around like this full time like some victors do might actually be worse than my job in the Capitol. I should shower. I probably stink of women and liquor and vomit. But then I remind myself that Annie is crazy and probably doesn't mind. I guess I might still be a little drunk, because I ask her, "Still think I'm not as disgusting as they make me out to be?"

In response, Annie puts her hand on the one of mine that isn't about to overflow my coffee with sugar. It should feel wonderful, her hand on mine. But instead I'm thinking that Annie's crazy and that I'm a harlot, and that this half-handholding thing we're doing is probably the closest either of us will ever come to intimacy.

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_Hope you all liked it. Please review if you can, and hopefully I'll be able to do some serious catching up with my writing over the weekend. Thanks for reading!_


	14. Chapter 13

_A/N: Started writing this from scratch today, so posting it already tonight is definitely a first, seeing as everything else so far has been in the works since Mockingjay came out (and, for some chapters, even earlier than that!). Hope it's still the same quality of work you're all used to, seeing as this will probably be the way I do things from now on._

_This one goes out to Caisha, who's always looking for more Mags._

_Thank you to everyone who has been reading, especially _**SmartKookie**_, _**District12Victor**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**PK9**_, _**.17**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**caisha702**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**The Other Perspective**_,_ **TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu**_._

_Finnick, Annie, and Mags are not my intellectual property. Just sayin...

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**CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

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"I'm tired," Annie says, and without another word, she retires to her bedroom. Her father and brother aren't back yet and the windows reveal that, even with the days growing shorter, the sun is still high in the overcast sky. This is something she does a lot, and it never ceases to make me uncomfortable that she always leaves me not knowing what the hell to say to her mom and sister. With Annie around, they entertain me with stories from when all three Cresta children were young. Like the time they played hide-and-seek and Annie climbed onto the roof, where she remained missing for over two hours. Of course, none of these stories are as cute as they should be when you think of Annie in the Games. But with Annie upstairs, the real conversation starts.

Annie's mom says simply, "She's been having a bad week," which I already know. She's hard to predict in this way, Annie. One week she's fine. The next, she's in bed by lunch time every day, if she even bothers to get out of bed at all. During the good weeks, I'm often tricked into believing she's normal. I guess I'm still pretty new at this. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking.

I'm thinking that maybe today I'll get off easy when Ariana asks, "How long did it take you to get back to normal?" I don't mean to laugh, but it just comes out. I clear my throat, but what can I say? No victor comes home entirely sane, and none of us go back to normal. There are the ones like me, who I can't even begin to analyze. Then there are the lunatics, usually District 1 and 2 Careers, who do things like cap their teeth in sharp points and dye their irises different colors and get injections under their skin so that they aren't just killers—they look like killers too. And there are people like Vessel and Annie, District 4's two victors who are too mad to become mentors. Mags is a rarity. She's another one I don't think I'll ever understand.

So when did I get back to normal? With Victory Tours and Hunger Games and visits from the president, I never got a chance. The sad truth is that the longer Annie stays like this, the further she'll be from the Capitol. It's actually in her best interest not to go back to normal. But there's no easy way to communicate that to her mom and sister. "My life isn't normal. And it's not the sort of life you'd want Annie to have."

The looks on their faces protest that I've chosen this life, and I have nothing to say in my defense. I can only be grateful that they don't ask the obvious next question: Why do I bother spending so much time with Annie? I don't have anything to say to that either. But given the fact that I'm in the house right now, you can bet they don't think that I'm trying to sleep with her or anything.

I tell them that I have to go help Mags with something, which isn't technically a lie since Mags usually has some job for me to do, and I leave. I haven't felt the need to knock on Mags's door since I was about fifteen, so I just walk in. My mentor's tiny frame teeters on a kitchen chair as she attempts to stuff some knickknacks she must have bought in town into her already cluttered cabinets. My lips curl into a smile. This is what I mean about her always needing my help around the house.

"You know, Mags, one of these days you're going to break a hip or something," I tell her, putting my hand on the back of the chair to steady it. She ignores me and tries to hold avalanche of crap with one hand while the other attempts to shut the door. Then I bring up the thing I really want to talk about. "Mags, you know everything. So why do I spend so much time with Annie?"

The cabinet door clicks shut and Mags secures it with a latch. Then she climbs down from her chair and ushers me into it. Sitting like this, I'm almost exactly her height. Mags's tiny, wrinkled hands find my cheeks and she makes me look into her eyes for my answer. Then she pushes my cheeks together in the way I've seen real grandmothers do to their grandsons and says, "All the sex is killing your brain."

Some noise that can't decide whether it's a cough or a laugh escapes my throat, and Mags's hands pushing my cheeks together keep me from accidentally spitting on her. Instead, I feel a dribble of saliva slide off my puckered lips and onto my chin as I try to rationalize her words.

"You like her," she says, releasing me. I wipe my mouth and chin on my sleeve and tell her that no, I don't like Annie. That, as a matter of fact, I don't like _anyone_. Especially not sick, not-right-in-the-head Annie.

Mags shakes her head at me in the same way Annie sometimes does, that way that says, _really, Finnick, could you be more obnoxious?_

"I don't think I'm _above _her or something," I say defensively. "I wouldn't talk to her every day if I thought that. She's probably the only person my age I can even stomach in more than small doses." As I say it, I know it's something more than just that. It's not that I _tolerate_ Annie. I enjoy her. But why?

And anyway, regardless of why I enjoy Annie's company, I'd never be anything more than her friend. Even if she wasn't crazy, I wouldn't want her. Even if I wanted her, I couldn't have her. Just thinking about makes my head hurt. I press my hands to my head, the way I always do when I need to drown out thoughts or noises. Mags pulls another chair over to the row of cabinets, climbs up, and begins to dig through one at a time. Finally, when I'm about to get over myself and get up and help her, she pulls out a box of sugar cubes.

"Stealing from the Capitol, are we?" I say, forgetting all else as she pours a pile into my waiting hand. I wonder if my teeth will end up like Mags's, which is to say verging on nonexistence, if I keep eating sugar like this. Surely the Capitol has means of assuring that won't happen, at least not to me.

"Had to stock up," she tells me. Right. Because Mags won't be going to the Capitol for any more Hunger Games. Something else that, when I think about it too much, hurts. She must see that I'm upset, because she adds sympathetically, "You can take care of yourself now."

"Can I?" I ask before she even finishes. It's probably the most selfish thing I can say, seeing as Mags has stayed on board with me for five years even though she hasn't had to, even though she's done this for most of her life. So I tell her I'm sorry. And even though I am, it's not my most convincing performance. "We've got to cut the cord sometime, right?" I say, faking a smile. "And anyway, you're about the only person I'd trust to keep an eye on Crazy two houses down in my absence." This part, at least, is true.

Mags smiles and pours the remaining sugar cubes onto the table. "I'll watch her."

I don't know why, but this makes me feel better about the whole thing. If I like Annie enough to share Mags with her, then maybe I do like her more than I think.

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_As always, I freaking love reviews... but not as much as I love my reviewers!__ See you all next chapter!  
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	15. Chapter 14

_A/N: Okay. First off, I'm sorry that I didn't get back to every reviewer the way I normally do. Second, two days with nothing new...yeah. But you'll forgive me when you find out I spent my weekend planning more of this story and working on the next five chapters. Yes, there will be more than just five more chapters. But that's what I have so far._

_No new news on the job front. I hate not knowing whether I'll wake up tomorrow and have to give up everything for a while in exchange for being able to say that I have a career. But I appreciate all the well wishes!_

_Thank you to everyone, especially my devoted reviewers, without whom I never would have gotten so much work done this weekend. Really, the rest of you should thank them for being the reason you're reading this. _

_Just having fun with Suzanne Collins's amazing characters. (Have I mentioned that I'm EXTREMELY annoyed that no one got a picture of me high-fiving her at the Mockingjay release? And REALLY? Has it already been nearly a month since the book came out? Whoa. Where have I been?)_

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**CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

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It would seem weird that I spend so much time with Mags and Annie and no time at all with Isla if you didn't know that Isla is one of those victors whose children went to the arena and failed. Her son was reaped fifteen years after she was and came home in a wooden box instead of a crown like his mother did. It probably bothers Isla the way it used to bother me that Annie, who really doesn't have it that bad, is crazy. But if it does, she doesn't mention it. She hardly talks to me at all on the train ride. This fact does nothing to assuage the loneliness I feel at Mags's absence.

My kid this year is fifteen and, barring another catastrophe like Annie's, he doesn't have the best shot at winning. Unless they're related, consecutive victors from a single district are nearly nonexistent. The kid is better company than most everyone else on the train, though, which is rather unfortunate since it really would be better not to get attached. The girl is eighteen and equally unlikely to win. She has the same green eyes a lot of us have, and it doesn't matter that that's about the only thing she has in common with Annie; she still reminds me of the girl I left back home, and I refuse to speak to her because of it.

I use the things I hate as a distraction from the inevitable fact that I won't succeed as a mentor this year. After the first night, I realize that Mags was wrong to have stuck by me these five years. I'm as dependent on her as others are on drink and drugs. I roam the halls, ride the elevators, anything to keep from sleeping. Withdrawal marks my eyes with heavy bags and dark circles. I'd ask someone for a drink, but the choppy waters of drunkenness are much more difficult to navigate than the familiar tides of sex. Near the end of the training week, I do something I've never done before and fall asleep in a stranger's bed. I can't help myself. I'm exhausted. I wake to find additional payment in the form of breakfast and I throw the tray across the room, splattering foods and sauces whose names I don't know aross the lemon yellow walls. _Hope you enjoyed the good night's sleep, _I tell myself. _Because it cost you anything you might actually be able to use._

I pull myself together for the cameras and, somehow, I'm physically and mentally present the night scores are revealed. The boy gets a ten, the girl an eight, and I realize I have no idea what either of them can do in the arena. Normally, Mags would more than compensate for my complete inadequacy as a mentor, but this year I have to hope that part of the strategy is for these two to stick with the Careers so I can rely on the other kids and mentors to keep them safe.

In the end, the strategy doesn't matter. The boy takes a mace to the spine during the bloodbath, and I'm forced to sit wishing the cannon would fire so I know that he's dead, that he's not lying there suffering. But it's the bloodbath, and it's a few hours before the nine cannons let us know that he and the others are out of their misery.

There's a girl, not the one from District 4, who reminds me of Annie. Not for her eyes or anything about the way she looks, but because she's scared. I've missed too much of everything to know her name or what she said in her interview. While the others fight it out, she stays away. And when it's down to only a handful of kids and things are starting to get boring, this girl, who I've learned is from District 7, decides to seek out the others before the Gamemakers take things into their hands. It's then that she starts to remind me of someone else whose competition found out too late that he was the one to kill. Johanna Mason is to ax as Finnick Odair is to trident. I don't have to watch the screens to know how the remainder of the Games will play out.

The night of recaps, I get to see everything I missed. Johanna, who played the shy weakling of a girl. Who scored a five in training and shrugged her shoulders and blushed nervously during her initial interview. She might have melted into her chair if not for her eyes, brown and big and anything but deadly. That child was forgettable. The killer before me now is anything but. For her second interview, Johanna wears a dress that shows off her athletic build. Curvy, feminine, but undoubtedly strong. At seventeen, she's cold and uncaring, and if President Snow gets his way, she'll probably be working the Capitol the same way I am starting with her Victory Tour.

And I don't care.

With Annie's ordeal still fresh in everyone's minds, it annoys me that Johanna Mason hid and pretended to be scared the way Annie was for real only to turn around and slaughter the remaining kids with an ax. An ax! The same weapon that killed Annie's district partner, splattering her with blood and sending her straight into madness in the process!

No, I will never be Johanna Mason's friend.

At her banquet, she has the nerve to come up to me and tell me, "You're Finnick," like I don't know my own name. What makes it worse is that, as she says it, she trails her fingertips down my arm. My teeth grind against each other as my face twists in disgust. Johanna makes some noise through her nostrils out of amusement. Before she has the chance to walk away, I grab her wrist, pulling her attention back to me. "What?" she asks.

What? Why did I pull her back? I don't know. So I look at her stupidly. I have nothing to say. But I won't let go of her either. Finally, I tell her, "Your family must be so proud."

She twists her arm out of my grip. "Surely not as proud as yours, Finnick." She's gone before I can say anything, not that intelligent speech is even possible after that blow.

Why couldn't someone pull mine and Johanna's names out of the reaping ball the same year? As much as I hate the Hunger Games, that's a match I'd love to see. It doesn't matter that I'm still haunted by dreams of children I killed six years ago. If ever, in some alternate universe, Johanna Mason and I meet in an arena, I will gladly kill her myself.

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_Oh, Finnick._

_More on Johanna to come. Aside from Finnick and Annie (and okay, Katniss and Peeta and Gale and Haymitch!), she's one of my favorite characters. Actually, I freaking LOVE Johanna. "Brainless." Haha. You crack me up, Mason._

_Reviews, please.  
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	16. Chapter 15

_A/N: My only excuse is that I spent the week rereading the series. I'm halfway through Mockingjay now, and with the terribleness that is to come, I figured I should take a break from reading to edit and post a chapter._

_Thank you to _**tell it to the sky**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**Blue**_, _**Shar**_ (listened to the song and loved it, by the way!), _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**Other Perspective**_, _**PK9**_, _**.17**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**caisha702**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**District12Victor**_,_ **TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu **_(I think I got everyone, but FF is being stupid about letting me see my reviews) for the feedback. And thank you to you if you've been reading._

_I'll try to get two chapters up tomorrow to make up for the delay. Looks like I'm getting this job, though I don't know when, so I'm trying to do as much as I can before then. Hope you'll all still be satisfied with the quality of the story and pace of the updates.

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**CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

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I can't get it out of my mind, so I say out loud, "I can't believe that Johanna Mason girl." My audience, which consists of Dad, Mags, and Annie, stares at me. Then all three of them erupt into laughter. It's been three weeks since I got home, and as long as the marks where Annie's anxiety at watching the Games made her claw at her skin are still visible, I won't be able to let this thing with Johanna go. But even Annie thinks my anger is misdirected and ridiculous.

I never noticed the tiny threads that attached Annie to me until I went away and those threads started to pull at me, tearing something deep and irreparable. On the train, away from Johanna Mason and my parade of patrons, I could think, and what I thought was that I should invite Annie to have dinner at my house.

"She's been asking for you," her father told me when I showed up on the Crestas' doorstep less than an hour after leaving the train. And then Annie came barreling down the stairs. I put my arms out, half expecting her to leap into them, but she slowed when she got close. The way she looked at me made me think she was making sure I was real. Then she smiled, and that's when I noticed the scratches. On her neck, across her collarbone, on the backs of her arms.

"Are you okay?" we asked each other at the same time. In an instant, I'd gone from wanting to hug her to being afraid to touch her. To hurt her.

Annie told me that the water made her skin itch, which is outrageous seeing as the only water her skin has seen lately is the kind that all of the rest of us use for bathing. More likely, the Games threw her into another one of her flashbacks of the arena. Which only made me hate myself even more for leaving Annie and Mags and my dad at home.

Now all three of them are laughing at me for something I said about Johanna Mason.

"What?" I ask no one in particular.

They look to each other seriously, deciding which of them should be the one to break the news to me. Then Annie says, "Actually she kind of reminds me of you."

"Of _me_?" I ask. My dad starts cracking up again, but he's not laughing at the ludicrousness of Annie's suggestion. He's laughing at my inability to see that—in his eyes at least—it's true. Mags adds that she thinks me and Johanna might make good friends. Poor Mags. I worry sometimes that she's losing it. Then Dad says that if I wasn't his son and he didn't know me, he'd think I was every bit as arrogant as Johanna Mason seems.

"Maybe she's not so bad," Mags offers.

"Yeah," I say, annoyed. None of them were there. None of them saw her. "I guess you're right," I spit. "I've seen kids do far worse damage with an ax." Of course, I'm thinking of Gannet and Annie, and of the tribute who ended one's life and ruined the other's, but what I forgot is that Annie is here. That even something so simple as water can be one of her triggers. And here I am, bringing up the event that put this all in motion. I try to think of something to say, but it quickly becomes evident that the damage is done.

All at once Annie is covering her ears, pressing against her temples with her hands in that same upside down way that I do. I look from Mags to my dad, desperate and frantic for some kind of aid. Dad runs upstairs, probably to the phone. Mags has the sense to pull Annie's knife and fork out of reach. I tell Annie I'm sorry while we wait, but it's more for myself than for her since I'm sure she can't hear me. Her brother, Adrian, not her father, bursts through the door and tries to reason with her but winds up scooping her up and carrying her out, giving me an apologetic look on his way.

Even when she's gone, I sit there not knowing what to do or how this happened. All this time, I've been so careful with my words around Annie. Add this to the list of reasons why I hate Johanna Mason.

Add this to the list of ways I'm just like Johanna Mason, too. This is surely the sort of thing she'd do.

I don't touch the rest of my dinner, and when Mags leaves, Dad suggests that I go to bed.

"How did you get to be such a good man?" I ask him. I've always seen him as a better man than I'll ever be, but it's not the kind of thing I've ever said to him or anything. Right now, though, any advice he might be able to give me would be fantastic.

"I had a father who did whatever it took so that your grandmother and I could have a better life than he had." It's only the second time he's ever talked about his parents to me. The first was when I came home from school as a boy and asked him why I didn't have a grandma or a grandpa. My grandfather died in a boating accident the way a lot of people in District 4 do. My grandmother died after I was born, but not long enough after to give me any memories of her. Dad has almost always been my whole family.

"And that's what you do for me?" I ask, hoping he'll tell me something different. If being a good father is the key to success, I'd rather fail. I'd never have a son who the Capitol could turn into the new and improved me. And even if I wanted marriage and a child, those aren't options I'll ever be afforded.

He hesitates, and I find myself leaning forward on my chair, waiting for his words. "I used to think so. But no, Finnick. I haven't always known how to be there for you. You've experienced things I can't imagine. And I can't make your life any better or easier."

"My life isn't so bad, Dad," I lie. "I have money and fame and this house and access to whatever I want. Really, it could be worse." I add a little laugh for good measure.

"You're a good man, Finn." The name my mom used to call me. I protest. I tell him I'm not. He says, "You do what you need to do to protect the people you love. That makes you a better man than most."

He can't possibly know what it sounds like he knows. Can he? "I only look out for myself. That's the only way anyone ever wins."

"Not Annie," he reminds me.

"Not Annie," I agree. I drag my hand across my forehead and sigh, remembering how I upset her. "How am I supposed to fix what I did tonight?"

His eyes tell me that he has faith I can handle it myself.

I call first to make sure it's okay and then I go to Annie's for some damage control. It's like my first visit all over again, with Mr. Cresta leading me upstairs. Opening the door for me. Hovering in the doorway. This time, Annie's in bed. I probably shouldn't, but I sit on the edge of it in exactly the same place I sat last time, too. And I look into her bloodshot eyes when I tell her that I'm sorry. I put my hand on top of hers, the same way she did to me on the train when she knew I was upset. She flinches but doesn't reject my touch.

Seeing her like this, seeing the shadows of demons behind her eyes, makes me want to cry. Annie, who won the Games by surviving instead of killing. Who probably wouldn't hurt anyone ever. Who saw me for the murderer that I am and avoided me in training when she was only fourteen. Who cries at night and hardly talks to anyone but her family. And to me. Who figured out within hours of getting to know me that I'm not the person surrounded by women on television each year. Not really. Who, even after she went crazy, smiled at me here in her room. Held my hand on the train. Annie, who drowns out the sounds only she can hear in exactly the same way I do, and who cried tonight because of something I so carelessly said at dinner.

No, Annie wouldn't hurt anyone ever. The pain I feel at her sorrow, I did that to myself.

"Annie," I say, my voice pleading. "I'm so sorry. I wasn't thinking." I lean down and kiss her hand. Not because I'm kidding with her by trying to be sexy, but because I _want_ to kiss her and I can't. My lips curve into a smile against the calloused skin of her hands. The Capitol won't pamper her anymore like they do me. Her hands will always be rough from her obsessive knot tying. And compared with the long nails and eyelashes, the glittery skin, the feathery hair—everything that makes the women of the Capitol so unnatural and ugly—these calloused hands are perfection.

She lies there trembling, still hearing things I can't, and then falls into a restless sleep. Her father, who is still watching us, doesn't tell me to get out. He walks away and lets me reluctantly follow.

"Mr. Cresta…" I start, but what can I possibly say to him? That I won't hurt Annie ever again? I'm sure I'll find a way.

He spares my tongue from having to articulate the nonsensical thoughts and emotions surging through me. "I know, Finnick," he says kindly.

And he shows me out without telling me exactly what it is that he knows.

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_Now that I've exchanged making you all wait for a new chapter for making my friends wait for me to come out tonight, I'm free. (Though now I'm making myself wait either to read or write more.) Reviews make me feel loved._


	17. Chapter 16

_A/N: Thank you to all my readers and reviewers. You guys rock._

_But mostly, thank you to Suzanne Collins for creating this awesome world in which I love to play._

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**CHAPTER SIXTEEN**

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My dad says that in the real world of dating, there are rules. You ask a girl's dad before you ask her out. Dress nicely. Show up on time to pick her up. If you have to wait, make conversation with her parents. Hold the door open for her. If you take her to dinner, pull her chair out for her. Don't sit until she sits. When she stands, even if it's just for a minute, you stand. Offer your arm to her while you walk. Walk her to her door at the end of the date.

Really, it's amazing that he never remarried.

This isn't a real date. But that hasn't stopped me from going through the steps. I bought a new shirt. New pants. New shoes. And tonight, I'm having a picnic dinner with Annie in the circle of the Victor's Village. I can't risk bringing her any further from home than that. I'll need backup if something goes wrong, which it probably will because that's just my luck.

As soon as he opens the door to let me in, Mr. Cresta gives me the look. The one that says that—even though he may be starting to like me—he doesn't trust me. Not where Annie is concerned. I can't argue. So I tell him that I want to spend time alone with Annie to show her that I'm not a total idiot. "And so I can prove to myself and to your family that I can do this without messing up," I add, "so that maybe I can spend more time with her in the future."

He contemplates this. Because I've been intentionally vague about the whole future thing. Spend time as what? Friends? More? I don't even know, but the latter doesn't seem all that likely given either of our statuses.

We're still staring each other down when Annie descends the stairs in a knee-length blue linen dress with a lace collar and something like a thin white rope tied around the waist because the dress obviously isn't her own and it's a little big. Her hair is wild as ever and her green eyes sparkle, wide with excitement or nervousness or both.

It's more overwhelming than when I saw the selection of tridents in my first year as a mentor. Then, my jaw dropped. But now I'm just smiling. Smiling the way Mags smiles—except for the whole missing teeth thing—because my eyes have never laid eyes on anything so beautiful, and they're smiling too.

_Easy_, I tell myself. _You don't want to scare her_.

"The dress is my sister's," she says almost defensively.

"It doesn't matter," I tell her honestly.

The circle is full of sand and shells and little plants, and surrounded by a ring of the twelve identical houses that make up the Victor's Village. Five glow with varying degrees of lighting. Anyone who looks out their front windows will see us. I'm sure, as I spread out a blanket for us to sit on, that at least one person in one of the houses will be watching. We sit down. I open a basket and pull out dish after dish of fresh food I bought in town today. My cooking abilities are nowhere near those of my father, and I figure if I'm going to spread the wealth the way Mags does, I might as well buy things like food that won't sit in my cupboards for the rest of my life.

We eat in near silence. Or rather, I eat while Annie mostly watches me. She picks at some bread while I eat half and then all of the oysters. "How do you stay in shape when you eat so much?" she asks me.

The real answer is that I swim, but the last thing I want to do is bring up another bad memory. I can't think of another answer, so I say as cockily as I can, "How do you think?" which would sound terrible if not for its desired effect: Annie's laughter. She asks me to tell her something real. Something real. I shouldn't have to think so hard, but I want to say the right thing. "Mags is my best friend in the whole world," I tell her.

"Something I don't know," she clarifies, sweeping her hair out of her face. It falls right back over her eyes, as it always does, because she's always tilting her head toward the ground.

I say the first thing that comes to mind. "Um… I want to tell you about my brother, but I'm afraid it will make you sad." She doesn't say anything, so I continue. "I used to have a mom, but something was wrong when she was pregnant with my brother. He made her sick. I don't know what happened. I was six. But they both died when he was born." After the words leave my lips, I realize I've never spoken about this with anyone but my dad. Not even Mags.

"What was his name?" My heart sinks. My hands fidget, desperate to jump to my ears. Who knew I would be the one to lose control?

I don't have an answer. My eyes take in the blanket, the basket, the food. Annie's dress. Her tangle of hair. All of these things pull me back to the reality that I'm here with Annie. That Annie stopped judging me starting with our first real conversation. If I tell her the truth, she'll find some way to spin it into something not so terrible. So I tell her that my mom had a name in mind for my baby brother, but that she was keeping it a secret until he was born.

"My dad didn't want to name him the wrong thing. So we just…" It must sound so horrible to her. At six, it didn't seem like a big deal, burying a baby without naming him. Now it makes me sick. My cheeks flush with shame.

"You and your dad are really close," she says rather than asks. Then she looks at me the same way she did in the Capitol, like she's on the verge of figuring something out, only neither of us knows what.

"Tell me something I don't know about you," I say. It's not that I want to distract her from whatever she might be thinking as much as I need to distract myself from the awful images.

She laughs, embarrassed. Tucks her hair behind her ear this time. "My mom already told you all my stories."

"I'm sure she didn't tell me all of them." It's the first time I hear my trying-to-be-alluring voice, as opposed to the knowing-I'm-alluring voice I use in the Capitol. The fact that I'm essentially using it to coax Annie into telling me a story I don't know about her—in other words, a secret—isn't comforting. "Forget it. You don't have to. I'm sorry."

Her mouth and eyebrows frown. "I was going to say something, you know." I apologize again, ask her what she was going to say. But the moment has passed, and with it, her courage. She won't tell me. She asks me to tell her something else about my family.

I tell her about my dad. Starting with how he was only nineteen when I was born, and including everything important up until now. I don't even leave out the fight we had when I was sixteen. I tell her how I worry about his health, because even though he's not even forty, his heart beats harder and faster than it should. What I leave out is that I'm mostly worried that I'm growing more distracted during my trips to the Capitol, and that President Snow has access to poisons deadlier than any heart attack. My father, whose lack of status as a victor makes him more disposable than Mags or Annie, would be targeted first. Just thinking about it makes me feel sick all over again. "I worry about my dad. I worry about everyone. It's bad enough that Mags is getting up there in age."

"Mags really loves you," she observes. "How did you two get to be so close?"

Too many things keep me from being able to tell her much of the real story. "When I came home, and everyone else was saying congratulations, Mags knew that it was more appropriate to feel sorry for me." I tell her how Mags was the only person who understood what it was like for me, and how she tried to protect me during my first year as a mentor. "Actually, this is the first year she _hasn't _gone out of her way to protect me in some way." I realize something else and have to laugh. "She had planned to stop mentoring anyway, but then you came home—"

"And now she's protecting me," Annie interrupts.

"Yeah, which is, in essence, another way of protecting me. Because the only peace of mind I had in the Capitol came in knowing she would keep you safe."

"Why do you care about me?" She asks the question innocently enough, but that doesn't keep it from stinging. I have to remind myself that she's addressing her own insecurities, not attacking my reputation. She knows me better than that.

"Because you know me," my voice echoes my thoughts. "The real me. Without me having to explain. I mean, there are other things too, but that's how you hooked me. The more I get to know you, the more you reel me in."

She leans in closer, as if I'm the one doing the reeling. Suddenly, I'm terrified that she might do something really crazy like kiss me. The forward motion releases her hair from its place behind her ear. I'm afraid—or maybe I'm hoping—that my words will get lost in the tangle of curls before they reach her. "Annie, I like you." Actually, I could love this girl. But I can't tell her that.

It takes her a second to say, "You're very sweet, Finnick." Then she pulls back and says, "I'm getting tired." Annie gets tired a lot. At least she lets me walk her the short distance to her house before leaving me alone, lingering like a fool on her doorstep.

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_Thanks for reading._


	18. Chapter 17

_A/N: For reference, the previous chapter took place in the months after the Seventy-First Hunger Games, making Finnick and Annie twenty and eighteen, respectively. They would be the same age in this chapter, with Johanna being seventeen. Yes. Johanna. You have no idea how much I love writing her._

_This one was written with _**Steff Malfoy1**—_who __wanted to see something along these lines ages ago_—_in mind__.  
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_Thank you to all of my reviewers for all of your fantastic feedback! I love hearing what you like, what you don't, and what you'd like to see in the future._

_For your information, Ch. 17 is a little darker than previous chapters. A little reminiscent of Finnick's early years.  
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**CHAPTER SEVENTEEN**

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**The last place I want to be is the Capital—especially for Johanna Mason's Victory Tour—and yet here I am. My only solace comes in the fact that this is a short trip.

Mags puts a plate in front of me and tells me to eat while I have the chance. The idea of Annie not having Mags at home makes me almost as sick as the thought of eating, or of what I'll have to do tonight. But, again, I'm only here for the night. This will be nothing compared to the sometimes month-long stays I've endured during particularly torturous Hunger Games.

I was right about one thing. President Snow didn't let my distraction during my last two visits go unnoticed. Getting wasted during Annie's Tour. Confusing my days and nights during Johanna's Games. When the Victory Tour stopped in District 4 this time around, President Snow was sure to send something for me. The white envelope contained the simple message, _"Don't make me think you've changed your mind about our agreement," _and a single stinking rose petal. As if having Johanna Mason in my district, so close to everything I love, wasn't enough.

Before I can even push the plate away, there's a hand on my shoulder. One glance at the tattooed fingers tells me that it's begun. Mags gives my hand a squeeze as I get up. "So, where are we doing this?" I ask the fingers, not bothering to look at their owner.

It turns out that Finger Tattoos wants to go to one of the bedrooms President Snow reserves for this kind of thing. When we get there, I'm introduced to Mr. Finger Tattoos, who you can bet Snow has personally placed here for my benefit.

"Nuh-uh," I tell them, shaking my head and backing out the same way I came in. My own plain fingers curl into fists. "I'm not doing this." My refusal is the only part of any of this that's new. It takes everything I have to force down the tears and the memories of a time when I wasn't in control. "I'm not," I repeat. But it's obvious that the only person I'm trying to convince is myself. The lock clicks in place, sentencing me to what's sure to be a slow and painful death.

I try to think of home. Waves. Boats. Beaches. Detach myself from the routine, so that only the involuntary noises that escape my throat pull me back to the present. A crab scuttling across the sand. A trident puncturing something vital times three. Brain. Guts. Heart.

It's Snow, not Mags, who I want to see when it's over. He must have anticipated this, my needing to see him, because finding him requires little searching. Down a hallway, through a door. And then only a wooden desk and the ever-present threat to harm those I love lie between my hands and Snow's throat. Of course, he's smiling.

"Mr. Odair, the rumors must be true. You _are_ good if you're coming to tell me you've met your requirements after only…" he trails off to check his watch. "Well, that can't be right." I grit my teeth and allow him his mock disbelief. "Whatever they say, you're only human. But you're not here to tell me you're finished for the night, are you?"

Actually, that's exactly what I'm here to tell him. "I am done for the night. And that will continue to be the case every time you spring another of your surprises on me. That was never a part of the agreement." Already, I can feel control slipping through the cracks between my tightly fisted fingers. Feeling like a fish out of water, I force my lungs to fill with air while I attempt to regroup. "What I'm trying to say, President Snow," I start again, pleased to hear the businesslike tone my voice has taken, "is that it is impossible for me to split my time among all of those who desire it. As you say, I'm only human."

Snow folds his hands and places them between us on the desk but says nothing. I take this as an invitation to continue. "Some benefactors take more…time from me than others. Do you know what that's called, Mr. President?" I don't wait for him to answer. "Opportunity cost," I say. "You're a businessman as much as a politician. Surely you and I can work together to come up with an arrangement that meets both our needs."

I've done better than I could have hoped, but if I know the president, he's unmoved by my words and is likely devising a plan to kill my father right now. The best I can wish for is that my proposal has at least entertained him enough to ensure that no such plan will be put into motion. "Perhaps eliminating whatever it is that's distracting you from your duties would be a better resolution for our little problem. You've taken a liking to the Cresta girl, have you not?"

I laugh because it's all I can do to keep from screaming. "Annie Cresta is crazy, sir. She's my friend, but no more so than any of the other victors."

"I doubt that's true," he says curtly. "Nevertheless, I am willing to entertain your proposition. You will be excused for the rest of tonight. You will continue to be able to choose which benefactors, as you so aptly call them, to take on." He opens a drawer, scribbles something on a slip of paper, and slides it easily across the wood. My new numbers. Double what's been expected in the past. Before I have time to debate, Snow says, "You will not try to negotiate, Mr. Odair, unless you consider Annie Cresta even less of a friend than you've testified to."

Even without him bringing Annie into it, it might be easier to tell President Snow to forget it if not for the fatigue I still feel. So I agree, remind Snow that he will leave everyone back in District 4 out of it, and leave.

I'm thinking that I've won the battle even if I'm still losing the war when things go from bad to worse. Johanna Mason has claimed my seat and appears to be talking to Mags. "Up," I tell her, but she ignores me. Mags's eyes drift in my direction, and I wordlessly tell her that I'm tired and hurting. Then Johanna follows Mags's gaze and I find myself having to clear all emotion from my face, to hide it away from those wide-set, deadly eyes. Regroup. Again. "Johanna, be a dear and let the grownups talk."

She gives me the same smug look from after her Games. "Don't you have women to—"

"Get up," I growl.

Johanna turns away and says to Mags, "Someone's in a mood." I yank her chair—_my _chair—away from the table. "Alright. Jeez. No need to get your panties in a twist, Odair." I wait and watch her walk away, thinking she's probably off to annoy some other victor, before cautiously reclaiming my seat.

"I really hate her," I say, helping myself to whatever Mags is eating. Mags gets up without a word—could she possibly sympathize with Johanna?—and returns with a plate piled high with sugar cubes. I'm still tired, still aching and annoyed, but it's no use trying not to smile. I pop them, one after another, into my mouth. Flirt with women I'm no longer obligated to go to bed with. Celebrate my own victory instead of Johanna's. I feel better, but what I really need is a shower, which doesn't come until we're on our way home. After, I sit with Mags, eating the rest of the sugar, hating Johanna Mason and, more than anything else, wishing I could go back to a year ago when Annie held my hand during another trip home. I miss her, but it's not the pressure of her touch that I'm craving. What I really want is to go back and not feel anything for the crazy girl I'll never be allowed to love.

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_Johanna. Where would this chapter be without her? Look forward to much more of her in the next chapter...you know, unless I decide to write another one in between.  
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_And...I just now found out that I start work tomorrow. Kind of freaking out._ _You can probably expect some delays._

_I'm pretty glad I finished my third cover-to-cover reading of Mockingjay before I got the call. I would have felt robbed otherwise. Kudos to those of you who have survived it more times than that over the past month.__ I can't believe how drained this book leaves me._

_Reviews would do a lot to improve my current state of mind.  
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	19. Chapter 18

_A/N: So my job is crazy and all-consuming. Tattooed on my arm: 05:00 - Shower. 06:00 - Leave for work. 08:00 - Let the Games begin. 15:00 - Leave work. 16:00 - Plan for next day. 23:00 - Reflection._

_Hopefully the three-day weekend will allow for me to either write more or get ahead enough in my planning that I can start writing during the week again. Because I love writing and I love these characters more than I will ever love any job._

_Thank you to everyone who has read, especially those who have left feedback, including my latest fan, _**Whisperheart** _and everyone who recently reviewed my other stories._

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**CHAPTER EIGHTEEN**

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**Another Games. Mags and Annie are home in District 4. I'm twenty-one and in the process of giving my family another reason to laugh at me.

Wind chimes dangle above us, drowning our voices in their metallic music. My hands strip stems and vines of their leaves, weaving them into objects that have no names. Next to me, fingers thinner and prettier than mine crush beautiful lilies into nothingness. I've never brought any woman to the rooftop. This one brought me.

"So, do you have a girlfriend?" Johanna asks.

No, I didn't sleep with her. I found out tonight, though, that I was wrong about her having to suffer my fate. She can tell you stories, though, about what she did to the first guy Snow sent her way.

My left hand gives up its vine to my right and makes its way to my most intimate—and therefore most public—parts, checking through my pants to make sure we're all still here.

Johanna. And I thought I'd seen and heard it all.

Johanna wasn't given another chance; her stunt cost her her parents and three older brothers. I told her I was sorry, and she told me I was stupid. I think she's still desensitized from the arena—which is better than the likely alternative that she was always this way.

So I came to the Capitol this time around, prepared to do more damage to body and soul than ever before. Prepared to hate Johanna Mason, and to take some sick pleasure in watching her suffer. Then I heard the whispered talk of the murders. Had to go about my usual business anyway because apparently, I have even less room for error than I thought.

It was probably stupid, when you consider the wealth of untapped information I might have breached instead, but when the time came to collect payment, I just left. If there's any woman I can learn something from this time around, she's not from the Capitol.

Snow has already made a threat on Annie's life. Now I know he's good for his word.

So I tell Johanna that no, I don't have a girlfriend.

"Well, I already figured that much out, dickhead." Oh, Johanna and her nicknames. I'm quickly learning that she has a slew of them stored for anyone she doesn't immediately like, which is to say everyone. "I mean, is there someone who would be your girlfriend if that was a possibility?"

Johanna's not the type who'd strike you as being a gossip. Actually, I doubt she takes much of an interest in anyone. But when I tried to get out of the elevator tonight, Johanna shoved me backward and jammed her fist into the button that closed the doors. Once there was no risk of our voices being heard, she shoved me again.

I didn't have a chance to ask her what the hell her problem was before she interrupted me in a harsh whisper. "Seriously, they pay you for sex? I thought you were a joke!" And when she finished Part One of her rant, she pulled me onto the ground next to her and spent another twenty minutes telling me how terrible my life must be. Every time I thought she was done talking about it, she came up with some other horrible scenario that might be—and, in most cases, _was—_true. Finally I had to tell her that I'd had enough, and after about a minute of silence, she started this nonsense about me having a girlfriend.

At my lack of response, Johanna asks, "What's her name?"

If I could have a girlfriend, would Annie be it? In theory, it makes sense. It sounds perfect, actually. But realistically… I don't know. Honestly I don't think either of us could handle a relationship—much less with each other. Perhaps the thing that makes the idea of Annie and me seem so wonderful is the fact that it will only ever be a dream. None of this is any of Johanna's business, though.

"It's classified," I tell her. I don't know Johanna. I'm not even sure if I've decided to _like_ Johanna. She doesn't deserve to know about Annie. So I shift the focus. "Why do you care, anyway?" I ask her. I sound an awful lot like a teenager or something when I say it. So I add, "What about you? You're under no obligation other than to be a mentor. There aren't any female victors in 7, right? So you'll be a mentor until you get someone else who can do it. But what else?"

In the glow of the city lights, I can see that same look of smugness I used to hate. Now that I'm not its target, it's actually refreshing. "I'm going to rub it in their disgusting Capitol faces that they can't touch me."

Okay, so maybe I do like Johanna Mason.

She proves true to her word the following night when she follows my lead and toys with prey of her own. She doesn't have to take hers to bed like I do, but watching her brings a certain entertainment factor to the table, and it makes all of this seem a little more bearable. By the end of training week, I've gone from being worried about how her actions might compromise her safety to believing wholeheartedly that President Snow might even embrace the role his latest victor has taken on. After all, Johanna is more of a fighter than a lover. In a way, it's actually good that Johanna has no family left. Snow hates those of us who figure out how to beat him at his own games.

I've also gone from still hating Johanna Mason to considering her the best friend I have here. Leave it to Mags to always be right about everything.

When our kids die—another winner from District 4 or 7 might be considered boring—we go to the roof every night. Johanna tells me how much she despises the victors who don't have to be mentors or be like me or do anything. She asks me about my mystery girl but avoids all my questions and calls me a dickhead when I press her for information. Just like her smugness, Johanna's abhorrence/interest in me is a breath of fresh air in this poisonous, perfumed Capitol. When it ends and it's time to go home, I'm actually sad to see her go. And even though Victory Tours are always hell, I'm looking forward to the next one. But I'm also going home to Annie, and to Mags and my dad, and that fact outweighs all else.

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_Certainly not my best work. Hope it was enough to hold you over anyway! Next chapter should be up this weekend._


	20. Chapter 19

_A/N: Huge thank you to the people who are still reading and reviewing, even with the lack of updates. And thank you to all my new readers too! _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu**_, you guys have my heart_—_even those of you I haven't heard from in ages! Please let me know you're all still alive out there. I miss you!_

_I wrote three chapters so far this weekend but I'm going to try to hold on to the other two for at least a few days so that even if I can't write any more this week, I'll still have stuff to post._

_No copyright infringement intended. I just need to play with these characters to keep myself sane._

_I hope the quality of my writing isn't suffering like every other part of my life. This job suuuucccckkkksssss. end rant_

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**CHAPTER NINETEEN**

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**I'm fourteen years old again. Wandering the streets of District 4 and thinking that I'll never get married. Except we haven't had a Parcel Day in over a year and a half, and I'm not fourteen, and I've found the person my life is better with than without.

Annie wanted to come to town with me, but I told her no. Now the same lips that told her to stay home utter curses under my breath. I'm not accomplishing anything by being out here. This little mission I'm on was Annie's idea. But I insisted I needed fresh air and that I could use the time to think and blah blah blah blah blah. My hands burrow deeper into my pockets. I'll have to remember to thank whoever suggested that I wear something with a hood. But even that doesn't protect all of my face from the stinging rain. This hurricane season isn't going down without a fight.

Last week, Mags had a small stroke. One minute she was Mags. The next she was more off-balance than usual, and not even I could understand her slurred speech. I can't remember calling the doctor or tearing Mags's kitchen apart, searching for the pills she's supposed to keep on hand. Annie and her sister have since cleaned up the mess, but no one's bothered to fix the broken cabinets or my battered hands.

This isn't Mags's first stroke, I know. The doctor expects her to make a full recovery. But that doesn't stop it from scaring the hell out of me.

Annie's idea was for us to take over Mags's job by going into town and buying useless things. I bitterly told her that Mags wasn't dead, and she politely reminded me that this is a bad time of year for most people outside the Victor's Village. I don't deserve her.

In a way, I hate myself for thinking of Annie and not Mags today. But not having Mags, not _really _having Mags these past few days is taking its toll. I need Mags. But right now I need Annie so much that I'm afraid of what I might do.

I need Annie. But there's no use in denying that I also _want _Annie. I want to spend every minute of every day in her presence. And when she smiles at something I've said or done, sometimes I think it might be nice to kiss her. Just thinking about anything more than that makes me feel like a predator, which is close enough to the truth.

In the past few months, I've become wildly possessive of Annie. It's not an if-I-can't-have-her-no-one-will kind of thing. I guess you can say that I sympathize with her father, though. I want to protect her from everything, even if the thing she needs protection from is me.

At the market, I buy the things I deem useful first. More clot-dissolving medicine. Aspirin. New pillows and blankets and anything I think might make Mags more comfortable. About a dozen variations of canes I have no intention of letting her use, even if it means I have to carry her for the rest of her life. But necessities are fewer and farther between than the kind of crap Mags usually brings home. I'm not kidding anyone; this shopping thing I'm doing wouldn't be my forte even if I had the mind for it.

The crowd back at Mags's only makes everything seem worse. The doctor. All the Crestas. Dad. Isla. Pisces. Vessel. I've hardly laid eyes on my fellow male victors the entire seven years I've lived in their village. Since Mags's stroke, I've seen them every day. I'm still not used to Pisces's sunken eyelids that do little to mask his empty eye sockets. The way Vessel shifts around, says things and jolts unexpectedly. It would be alarming even if he wasn't nearly a foot taller than me and at least twice my weight.

I hate that everyone's acting like she's dying.

I hate that I can't think about anything with Pisces's empty eyes staring at me in my dripping jacket.

Annie and I stay behind as Mags's other visitors leave in singles and pairs. Mr. and Mrs. Cresta. Adrian. My dad and Ariana. Isla and Pisces. Vessel. I tell Annie to go home even though I need her to stay. She tucks her feet under her body, which melts into mine on the couch. A calloused, perfect hand pulls my arm around over her like a blanket. Annie, who knows that I need to talk about Mags but can't find the words, tells me stories of happenings I've missed by being in the Capitol for Games and Tours. Games of checkers. Deliveries of blankets and curtains and food to the poor. Everyone huddled around the television to watch me make my rounds. To watch me fail.

"We don't really watch," she says, tilting her face up to mine. "I can't watch the Hunger Games anyway because…well, you know." She's right. Annie's something of a mental/emotional time traveler where the Hunger Games are concerned. Her body stays trapped in the present while the rest of her relapses, unreachable, into darkness. "We don't watch the other stuff either, though. We keep the television on because we have to and because Mags wants to see you, but mostly we do other things."

Good. I hate thinking about them watching even the little bit the cameras will show of the things I do. "I worry about you so much when I'm gone." I don't mean to say the words aloud, but there they are.

"I think I worry more about you," she says seriously. "We're all together here. You're all alone."

"I'm never alone, Annie," I say, even though I know that's not what she means.

I hate that she's not the first girl I fall asleep with. I hate the warmth that pervades my veins when I wake and find her still sleeping soundly next to me. And I hate that I have to untangle myself from Annie's arms and hair before I can go upstairs to check on Mags.

"Doc says you have to lay off the sugar, Mags," I tell her tiny form. Her eyes are closed, but I've learned that this doesn't necessarily mean she's asleep. Even as I say the words, Mags's thin lips curl into a half smile which elicits a full smile and a sigh of relief from me. "I'll tell you what. I'll cut the aspirins into cubes for you, if you'd like." I might be more convincing if my voice would stop cracking.

She mumbles something indecipherable that ends with a single clear word: Annie. I tell her Annie's downstairs on the couch and that no, I didn't kiss her or anything else completely irrational. She opens her eyes to examine my wrecked knuckles, evidence of exactly how irrational I can be.

I remind Mags that the thing with Annie is different, even though I know I'm not changing her mind on the matter. Mags is too old to be swayed in much of anything she believes, and she's under the absurd impression that if Snow planned to hurt Annie to keep me faithful to my lovers in the Capitol, he would have done it already. Title or not, physical relationship or not, Mags thinks that Annie has my heart. Hasn't Snow already insinuated that he believes the same? And anyway, Annie is a victor too. President Snow might threaten and take the lives of victors' family members, but murdering a victor—at least in Mags's eyes—would be too low, even for our dear president. What Mags thinks is that Snow is bluffing. Keeping me scared. Mags says Snow sees my popularity as power.

What Mags doesn't know is that Snow would kill his best friend to get ahead. He doesn't care about Annie or any of the rest of us. Victors are just as disposable to him as everyone else. It's just that most of us fall into decay without his help. I'm sure Snow will find a way to come after the rest of us eventually.

I humor Mags by telling her that I slept on the couch with Annie, and that neither of us was visited by the nightmares that often—no, _always—_plague our sleeping hours. Then I tell her, "You know, most people, when they're sick, temporarily shelve their interest in such mundane things as fictional relationships."

Mags scowls and mutters something else unintelligible. This time, I think it has less to with the stroke than with her frustration at her powerlessness when it comes to me and Annie.

I made an agreement with the doctor that I'd pay him to stay in one of the guest rooms until he's willing to bet his life that Mags's condition will continue to improve in his absence. Today, he thinks, is that day. That means I'm supposed to take on the bulk of Mags's rehabilitation, which mostly involves changing her diet and getting her to take her medicine and walk around. I let her use a cane but only because she walks better with it than she's ever walked before. The diet part of the plan proves the most problematic.

"Dying anyway," she tells me, which angers me until I remember that this is Mags we're talking about. She doesn't mean dying in the immediate sense, but in the sense that we're all dying. And, really, I shouldn't expect anything different. In an odd way, I'm actually comforted by her resignation to go out on her own terms. Then she adds, "Can't protect us from everything."

That doesn't mean I'm not going to do everything in my power to be for Mags the lifesaver she's been for me.

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_Again, not my favorite. But I have to say that I love Chapter 20 and I'm super excited to post it later this week. See you all then, and as always, thank you for reading!_

_P.S. Also, _**abozzo**_ suggested that I write a companion piece to _**A Night for Firsts**_ in Annie's POV. It's not something I ever thought about__, but I have to say that I kind of like the idea. At the same time, I don't want to ruin what's easily my best piece of writing with a crappy sequel of sorts. So I don't know. It's not anything that would happen anytime soon anyway. But I'd love if you guys weighed in on the issue. Thanks so much!__  
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	21. Chapter 20

_A/N: I have to say, this is one of my favorite chapters so far. It's also probably one of the first chapters I planned, so I can't believe it's taken me this long to finish and post it. _

_It's because of _**Max Alleyne**_, who provided my 100th review of this story, that I'm posting this now, at about 11p.m. EST. So thank you, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu **_for making all of this possible. I probably wouldn't find the time to keep writing if not for the fact that I promised you all more of this story._

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**CHAPTER TWENTY**_  
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"You think I'm crazy," she says, and even through the phone, I can hear Annie smile.

I can't help but reciprocate. I tell her, "Well yeah, but I've always thought that about you. You were crazy for not being absolutely smitten with me the moment we met. You were crazy when you put your hand on mine on the train. You're crazy every time you leave the present, and when you scratch at your skin."

"And when I got hysterical at dinner," she supplies.

"No," I correct her. "The creep who made you cry was the crazy one that time. But you, you've always been crazy in varying degrees."

We've been spending more time on the phone with each other than actually with each other lately. This was Annie's idea, and it's the reason she thinks I think she's crazy.

"I just know I'll miss you too much when you're gone if we keep seeing each other so much," she explains.

I know. We've been through this. Next she'll start to get upset. I'll tell her I'm coming over. She'll say no, forget it, that I must think she's crazy. I think she's more endearing than anything, but I won't tell her that.

When I finally hang up with Annie, I go through everything with my dad for about the six hundredth time. I'm just as bad as Annie in this way. But who can tell how long the Games will be and what could happen in my absence? So I review Mags's medicine schedule, the diet she should but won't follow. I've instructed them to all watch the Games together from I don't care whose house. I don't want Mags out of someone's sight. I don't want Annie out of someone's sight. More than anything, I just want to stay home. I can't shake the feeling that Mags might have another stroke or that Annie might do some real damage to herself without Mags's constant attention.

Outside the Justice Building, I kiss everyone's—even Mr. Cresta's—cheeks goodbye in an elaborate show of affection for the cameras. This makes Annie and Ariana laugh but does little to make me feel better about leaving.

It's the first year in a while that the boy from my district is larger than me. Still, with mine and Annie's victories so fresh in everyone's minds, it's unlikely he'll win. If anyone could make things interesting by winning, it'd be a kid from District 7 or 12, because they have the least victors. But with Johanna's victory for 7 equally new and another couple of starved-looking kids from Panem's coal district in contention this year, it's unlikely. There are always the old throwbacks in 2, though. No one seems to mind much that 2 spits out more victors than rocks.

Everything up until the rooftop with Johanna is a blur of trains and chariots, lips and lingerie. At least Johanna doesn't have to shove me this time. We ascend in silence, and when we reach our destination, she briefly throws her arms around me before recoiling in disgust.

"Ugh. You smell like Capitol."

"Nice to see you, too," I tease. And even though the rest of the week is equally as awful as usual, it's better with a friend. Johanna keeps me on my toes. Being on my toes keeps me distracted from being homesick.

We're able to get Johanna's kid in with the Careers along with mine. The Games themselves last just over two weeks. Two weeks of mutts and metal and blood. But in the end, it's District 1 that takes the crown. It's a good thing I'm not in charge of coming up with the odds for these kids. Except my own, that is. Because since Annie won, I've had perfect accuracy with predicting District 4's results.

Excitement beats confusion when Mags shows up to fetch me from the train. I'm so happy to see her out and about, cane and all, that I scoop her into my arms and spin her in circles. When dizziness forces me to set her back on her feet, I steady her with my hands on her shoulders and kiss her wrinkled forehead. I might have overdone it, because Mags looks like she might be sick.

I'm suddenly acutely aware of hundreds of pairs of eyes on us. Not on us. On me. _What? _Mags. She knows. I search her dizzy eyes. _What? _My eyebrows beg the question my mouth can't ask, and Mags shakes her head. Not here, then.

The texture of the ground. Road. Gravel. Sand. The sun burning the skin of my shoulders and nose. These are the only things I know. Something is wrong. Something is very wrong. What little of my energy isn't focused on some variation of that fact or the possibilities commands my feet forward.

If it was Annie, Dad would be here. If it was anyone else, dad would be here, but I force that logic out of my head. Dad loves Annie like she's his daughter. He wouldn't let me face it alone if something happened to her, just like I didn't let him face it alone when the love of his life died. It could be one of our old neighbors, one of Dad's friends. That would explain his absence. Could be another victor, and maybe they all agreed that Mags should be the one to deliver the blow. These thoughts—these _hopes,_ really—are little distraction from the truth I won't let myself admit. Because that truth makes no sense at all.

I blink, blinded by unshed tears. The muscles in my legs are vaguely aware of the incline of the road that means we're about halfway from town to the Victor's Village, out of sight of both. Mags will need me to help her uphill and I can't do it. I can't do it. I can't carry her this time. I realize that I'm done. Collapse onto one of the large rocks that line the road.

"Mags," I plead, knowing that whatever she tells me will kill me right here on this spot. Warm saliva floods my mouth. Before I die, I'm going to be sick. I wipe my lips with my palm. Keep my hand over my mouth.

I know before Mags says Dad's name, "Ray," that I'm an orphan.

My stomach turns. My hands fly instinctively to my temples and ears. I need to run. Cry. Scream. Puke. But instead I hear myself ask, "How?"

Mags tells me, "Heart." And because she knows what I really meant when I asked, she strokes my cheek and tells me, "Really. In his sleep."

I wake up in bed in my underwear and reeking of fish. Gashes across my chest and arms and hands confirm that the vague memory I have of being at the pool isn't a dream. Hauling gigantic fish out of the water. Trying to release them into the ocean. Smashing scales and flesh against the jagged rocks in the process. These are the things I remember. I have no idea how or when I got home, or how long it's been.

I wash off the smell and the scabs in the shower and go back to bed until the phone wakes me. I know I don't have to run to answer it. Annie will let it ring until I'm ready. Still naked from the shower—I live in this house alone now—I make my way to the study, press the receiver to my ear, and wait.

"I don't know what to say."

I'd be lying if I said those are the words I was hoping for. After a few minutes of silence, she asks if she should come over. I nod before I realize she can't see me, and then say, "Yeah. Yeah, that would be good."

We lay on the floor—my sheets still stink of fish—as she fills me in on all the details I'm missing. How Vessel—huge, insane, daunting Vessel—was the one to carry me home. How Pisces shared sleep syrup, and Isla stitched my palms and feet, which got the worst of the damage. Annie tells me that she and Mags took turns sitting with me until I started to stir. "We thought you might need some time alone."

I don't want to make her tell me about Dad, though I still don't know anything about what happened. Mags said it was his heart. Insinuated that it wasn't anything I did that brought it on. My hands raise to the sides of my head again because I'm still not sure I didn't kill him.

Annie catches my wrists. "Finn," she says sadly.

Finn. Like Mom called me. But it's not her voice I hear. What was it my dad said? _"You're a good man, Finn."_

"Finn," Annie says again when I start to cry.

I'm aware of nothing but the steady _buh-bum, buh-bum, buh-bum_ under my left ear. We—or at least I—must have fallen asleep again. I try not to move, needing to hold on to the sound of Annie's heart. My eyes open and squint back shut, shielding themselves from the orange sunset. I search the brightness through my eyelids before I realized I don't even know what they've done with my father's body.

"Hey, Annie," I say, nudging her awake.

Mags goes with us to the same place where my mom and brother have been buried for sixteen years. The marker, which once read _Marina Odair_ now reads _Here lie Ray and Marina Odair, and their baby son. _While I sit on the ground, elbows on my knees and head in my hands, Mags tells me that she woke up to find him slumped and lifeless in her rocker. This happened a few days after I left. I don't want to know what horrors I committed on television before my dad went to sleep and died.

Annie starts to cry. My fingers bury themselves in my hair. The sun disappears.

Sleep syrup keeps me drifting confusedly through days and nights. I fall asleep in bed. Wake up in the dark, tasting gritty sand. Curl my fingers in its coolness. Dump it over my shirtless chest.

Some indeterminate time later, Adrian tells me, "You know, my sister isn't the only one who's worried about you."

Submerge myself in training. I don't care about the kids. The cold, smooth metal of the trident feels like home in my hands.

Swim. Swim out so far that the Peacekeepers train their guns on me. It's all a show, though. They know I won't escape. Even they love me too much to shoot me with anything more than a tranquilizer if I tried.

Wake up drenched in one of Mags's guest rooms. There's a slight shift of the mattress as a body lighter than mine gets up. I see it's only Mags and still I panic because really, would I be able to stop myself from going to bed with the first woman who offered? My mentor's cane clicks against the floor.

"Stupid boy," Mags tells me on her way out.

A second shifting weight on the other side of the bed sends my heart and head racing all over again. I turn and see Annie. Annie. Pale and wearing a blanket around her shoulders. Her hair has met its match; only water can defeat her curls. They hang in a tangled sheet, turning the blue fabric of the blanket to navy. Somehow, I know it's not that she's just finished bathing.

I'm not sure what I've done, but I know an apology is probably appropriate. "I'm sorry," I choke out, surprised by the soreness of my throat. She tells me that I was sleeping on the beach again. High tide. Someone had the sense to pull me away from the ascending water before I inhaled too much. And when Annie got to the beach and couldn't find me in any of my usual spots, she freaked and took to the water.

"I'm sorry," I repeat. Because I can see she's fighting off some waking nightmare even as she tells it, and I know that the hell she's been going through for years is a lot like the hell I'm experiencing now. I put her through hell. I put the girl I love through hell. Endangered her.

"It's the first time I've been swimming in years." She says it like it's a good thing. So I ask her if it's a good thing. She says, "I'm still deciding." Follows with, "Don't ever scare me like that again."

Then her wet hair is all over me. Her freezing feet tuck themselves between my legs. And I'm thinking, _if I leave this world, who will take care of this crazy girl for me?_

As if she's read my mind, Annie says, "You think I'm crazy."

For the first time in forever, I feel myself smile. "I think I'm crazy about you," I tell her.

Outside the door, I hear Mags's cane click down the hall. And I know she must be smiling too.

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_Ughhh. I know. But if Finnick had a family, he would have heard their voices in the jabberjay wedge of the clock and been as worried about them as he was about Annie after the breakout._

_Please let me know what you thought. Even though I loved it, it's kind of one of those chapters I worry about._

_Thanks for reading!  
_


	22. Chapter 21

_A/N: Soo...this is really late. I know. And honestly, I don't even think it's good. I wanted a chapter in between the last chapter I posted and the next chapter I had already written, and this is what came out. I changed it around a lot of times and I'm pretty sure it's as finished as it's going to get at this point.  
_

_Not having the time to write is probably the worst side-effect of my current job, and I probably wouldn't bother making the time at all if not for my reviewers. So thank you to _**bella-sk8er**_, _**IoriKonaN**_, _**Forsaken Dreamt**_, _**BlackCoyote**_, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu**_ for making this possible._

_Not my characters. Duh.

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE**

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My body can't help but respond as the only girl I could ever love strips down to her swimsuit and prepares to hand herself over entirely. Swimming. It won her the Games and has since been just another of her many triggers. Last time she did it, it was my fault. I can't even think about what might have happened had she been alone. So it was my idea to come here, even though I know it will be torturous for her. What I didn't expect was that I would feel tortured in my own way.

I shove my hands into the pockets of my trunks and pretend to be more interested in the gulls overhead than in Annie's body as she peels off her shirt.

"You sure you want to do this?" I ask, still not looking directly at her, still bouncing on the balls of my feet.

"No. But we're doing it," she resolves.

I'm glad Annie is crazy. I'm glad she'll never have to be part of my other world. And until today, I would have been glad to say that I would never do anything to compromise her innocence.

Sex. There's something I'll never understand.

Here's what I know: the number of people in the Capitol who can say that they have had me is, in all likelihood, in the triple digits by now. They pay me for the chance to brag to their friends about the things they've done with me. They pay to see me in my entirety. To feel. To taste. To test my body and discover if I'm everything they've heard I am. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I'm not. But I never disappoint. They leave me chafed and they leave me bruised. But mostly, they've always left me confused.

Right now, I may as well be the innocent thirteen-year-old kid who hoped to get his first kiss at the pool a billion years ago. And right now, I can't help but think it might be nice to be intimate beyond just hand-holding with Annie.

Okay, so we've been more intimate than that. Since my dad died two months ago, Annie and I have shared my bed exactly three times. Three nights of holding hands and talking until the sun came up and then, when the rest of the world was waking, falling asleep together. I've never done anything else that made me feel so close to another person.

Annie's got so much to say sometimes. She can go on for hours about little things no one else would notice, like the designs the wind draws in the sand. But mostly she asks me to tell her things that no one else knows about me, like what subject I liked in school when I was a kid and what I got for my tenth birthday. She doesn't say anything about my dad because she knows too well the damage death can do to a person. I'm down twenty-five pounds and looking a little haggard these days. Annie and everyone else will know when I'm ready to talk about it.

Today I'm not hoping for a kiss. I'm just hoping we don't have any major disasters. Annie climbs first, with me a step behind. If she falls or freaks out, I'll be ready to catch her. Actually, I probably won't be able to do much more than break her fall—especially since the view from behind has me more than a little distracted. But until then, I'm stuck trying not to think that this is a date or anything special. Climbing. With Annie as close to naked as I've ever seen her.

She collapses on the ledge when she reaches the top, leaving no room for me to join or pass her. Over her shoulder, I remind her that we can go back. She shakes her head. I look down to the water and sigh through my nose at how empty it looks.

I want to kiss the back of Annie's neck as she raises her arms over her head to tie up her hair. Everything about her is just so pretty. My lips are drawn to her skin. I'm trying to think of something funny to say just to give my mouth something else to do when Annie slides off the rocks.

I inhale sharply as every muscle tightens to the point of pain. In the second or two it takes for Annie to shatter the surface and submerge completely, I'm sure she's fallen and will drown and that this was really the worst idea anyone ever had. And then, as I'm about to tumble into the water after her, she resurfaces. Before I can figure out what's happened, my mouth and nose fill with saltwater. Then I'm trying to wrap my arms around her and keep us both above water at the same time.

"I'm okay. I'm okay." She says the words desperately again and again. But her body is rigid in my arms and I'm sure she'd sink like a rock if not for me. The muscles in my arms tighten. She doesn't fight back and yet I'm struggling. I say her name in my own version of the desperate voice she's still using to tell me she's okay. And then, by some miracle, I manage to pull her to the shelf on the far side of the pool.

I hoist her out of the water and rest my forearms on the platform. Water envelops me from the chest down. Annie's on her side, gasping for breath. I've barely just rested my chin on my arms when Annie sits up and says she wants to try again.

This goes on for the better part of an hour. She tests the water, gets that far-off look, and we're back where we started.

Then, when I'm past the point of wishing I would have taken her home a long time ago, something strange happens. Annie stops telling me she's okay and starts laughing instead. Like I might have forgotten she was crazy or something. She moves from being petrified to being the mermaid of her Opening Ceremonies with no in-between. I'm a good swimmer. I'm fast and fluid. But Annie really is a mermaid or a sea nymph or something otherworldly. She may as well have a tail fin in place of her legs.

I sit on the shelf and watch as she moves through the water, and then lie back, forgetting that I might need to jump in and save her at any moment. This, I think, is the difference between crazy Annie and mermaid Annie: crazy Annie needs to swim to stay afloat. Mermaid Annie swims because the universe offers no greater joy.

Before today, the last time I wanted to have sex was before the first time I experienced it. At thirteen and fourteen, I heard the older boys at school talk about it. There were confused feelings I got when pretty girls looked at me. I was always too scared to do anything more than kiss them. Then I was dropped in an arena with weapons and traps and twenty-three kids who wanted to kill me. It's hard to be scared of most things once you survive that. All my fears now surround the ones I love.

Sex isn't something I enjoy. I hate it. But I'm excellent at it, too. There's no point in trying to be modest when your every move is broadcast on live television for the nation to see. I know what to say and what to do. I can get away with just lying there and still be the best anyone's ever had.

And then there's Annie.

People feel sorry for her and everything, but they're not lining up to be her friends. It doesn't matter that she's beautiful; no one else will ever want this broken girl.

It's hard to look at her in the water and not feel like the little kid who came here to feel a girl's warm lips against his own. But I'm not innocent, and the images that come to mind are not those of an inexperienced adolescent. What I wouldn't give to have neither of us be victors for a day.

Weak as she may look, Annie pulls herself onto the ledge, interrupting a daydream in which my body presses against hers and I kiss her tears away. Her pain is present even in my fantasies.

"You're not swimming. Why?"

_I don't know. Because I like watching you. Because I don't want the water to wash away the thoughts I shouldn't be having. _I shrug my shoulders.

"Are you angry?" she asks, which is ridiculous. What do I have to be angry about?

The words come up like vomit before I can stop them. "Annie, do you ever think about us?" I'm still on my back, looking straight up at the sky. I don't want to see or hear her reaction. I don't know why I even brought it up.

"How do you mean?"

"I mean you sleeping in my bed with me and holding my hand all the time," I say seriously, still careful not to look at her.

"I like you, Finnick. I do those things because I like you."

"You don't just..." What? You don't just go around sleeping in people's beds because you like them? Is that what I was going to say? "You know, don't you, that we can't be together? If..." But what else can I say? She doesn't know—_won't ever _know—that Snow has already made a threat against her. So I can't tell her Snow has eyes all over town.

"I don't want to be with you, Finnick."

_Oh._ My face must go pale or blank or something, because the next thing I know, Annie's trying to take the words back.

"What I mean to say is—"

"I think you've said what you mean." My tone is what's going to turn this from a conversation to a fight.

"What does it matter anyway? You said it yourself. We can't be together." I don't have to look at her to know I've made her cry. Again.

I can't bring myself to apologize. So I say, "Then what are we? And please don't say friends."

"We're..." I watch her tongue search the backs of her teeth for the right words. "We're..." Her body goes rigid again. "You're the one who says we can't be together. You're the one who goes around—"

"Please don't finish that sentence," I say, pushing myself into a sitting position and onto my feet. My fingers tangle themselves in my wet hair. She was always the one person who understood what I do. She knows I hate it. She's always known. How could she use it against me now? "What the fuck, Annie?"

I lean back on the jagged wall, piercing the outer layers of my skin in places.

"I'm not saying that, Finnick!"

"Then why don't you try saying what you mean for once."

She takes a deep breath while I take pleasure in her pain. "Remember that time you took me to the circle and told me about your mom and your brother? I wanted so badly to kiss you. But I couldn't. And then...when Ray...Finnick, I...I don't...I can't even..."

Annie usually loses her words like this right before her meltdowns. I don't want to interrupt her, but what I want isn't important right now. "Annie, stop." I force myself forward. Touch her arm. Feel her flinch. Why are we fighting? Why am I doing this to her?

"I wanted to be with you. I wanted you. I needed you. And lately, you've needed me too. But we can't be together. So I don't want to make myself crazy thinking about you and everything I wish I could have with you when none of it can ever happen. I don't want to be with you. Because that's easier than the alternative."

It doesn't matter that she's right about us not being able to be together, or that I'm the world's biggest asshole for every horrible thing I've ever done to her. Annie wants to be with me. The smile has barely spread across my face when she says something else.

"Maybe we need some time apart. Sleeping together, coming here like we're a couple or something, it's already putting the wrong ideas in our own heads. Who knows how long it will be before people start talking?"

"Or before we trick ourselves into acting on it," I add, because even though it kills me, I know she's right. "I mean, look at us. You're not exactly sound-minded. I'm...well, let's not even get started on the things I do. But my guess is that it would be pretty easy for us to let things get out of control."

Then we're sitting with our legs in the water, ready to slide off the shelf and make the short swim to the other side where we can climb out. Go home. Be apart. All that's left is for one of us to make the first move.

My arm finds its way around her. Our heads hold each other up. I want to tell her that maybe we should kiss. Just once. Just to have it to hold on to. But I know it's not a good idea, and I doubt I'd be able to stop there anyway. Instead, I tell her the thing that I'd want that kiss to say. "I love you."

As soon as I've said the words, I become aware of the pounding of my heart and the rush of blood. I know that if I spend another second touching her, it won't matter whether or not I kissed her. I still won't be able to stop myself.

So, before Annie has a chance to answer with the echo of words or something far worse, I reclaim my arm, slide into the water, and start swimming.

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_Reviews from readers new and old keep me going_. _Let me know what you think!_


	23. Chapter 22

_A/N: Huge thanks to _**Steff Malfoy1**_, whose feedback forced me to put Finnick's motives into words. (Edit: I previously had all of this listed as happening a year earlier, which obviously it doesn't. This chapter takes place during the year Katniss and Peeta win, which is the 74th Games, which puts Finnick at 23. Duh. I guess Finnick and Annie aren't the only ones having weird mental relapses.) And for all of you who are keeping track, Finnick's dad died during the 73rd Games, putting Finnick and Annie at around 22 and 20 respectively. Here, Finnick is 23 and Johanna is 19.  
_

_This one goes out to _**Adrenaline Write**_ because of a conversation we had ages ago about the (im)possibility things getting physical between Finn and Jo.__  
_

_Thank you to _**Kraft Dinner**_, _**bella-sk8er**_, _**IoriKonaN**_, _**Forsaken Dreamt**_, _**BlackCoyote**_, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu**_._

_And to my readers who are keeping a low profile... I love you too. Now review!_

_Seriously though: It's awesome that people even read what I write. To know that you're all still with me, and that you're looking forward to more of this... it's the highlight of my life right now.

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO**

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When I try to talk to Johanna about my dad, she asks me, "Why don't you talk to your girlfriend about this?" And when I tell her I don't have a girlfriend, and that I don't want to make the girlfriend I don't have upset, she says, "Oh, no. Tell me your girlfriend isn't Annie Cresta."

"I don't have a girlfriend," I repeat, smiling. I know how Johanna feels about any victor who goes mental after winning. But I also know that she won't say anything bad about Annie if she knows how I feel about her.

She does laugh though, in one short burst. "I bet you two have a killer sex life."

The thing with Johanna, when she makes comments like this, is that you can never tell if she's being sarcastic or not. Whatever the case, I say, "Not that it's any of your business, but I've never even kissed her."

This only makes Johanna more confused. "You've never slept with her?"

I shake my head, both because the answer is no and because I can't believe that we're having this conversation. "We've slept in the same bed," I tell Johanna. That, of course, makes her laugh more. I put my hand over her mouth and tell her to shut up.

Probably, I should be annoyed with Johanna for making me think about everything Annie and I have been through in the year since Dad's death. Like the girlfriend who's not my girlfriend, I've been trying to pretend not to feel anything. I can't say it's been working all that well, which is part of the reason why I've barely been alone with Annie since I blurted out that I love her. Part of me must still be holding on, because I'm still half-expecting Annie to say that she loves me too.

Maybe I'll go home and we'll both find that she's missed me.

Maybe I'll go home to another horrible surprise.

Johanna goes all doe-eyed and her lips pout against my palm. I remove my hand from her mouth, allowing her to say, "I'm sorry. That was inappropriate." Again, with sarcasm.

"The last thing I want is to get laid. I'm sure you of all people can appreciate that."

Johanna scowls and spits out some imagined bad taste. "Screw you, Odair."

"I already told you that I'm not interested," I remind her.

Johanna makes a weird face, like she wants to say something but is physically struggling to hold it back. When she swallows it down, she tells me, "Close your eyes," in a whispery voice that so lacks her usual harshness, it sends a shiver up my spine.

"What?"

My heart pounds against my ribs, begging to be seen through my shirt. Trying to ward off what it knows is coming. I think _I_ know what's coming, but I'm too weak-or maybe I just don't care enough—to do anything to stop her. My eyelids obey.

I'm conscious of her face hovering above mine. My cheeks wait for the familiar tickle of curls until I remind them this isn't Annie. Johanna's hair is short and spiky and—like everything else about her—probably stings. At this proximity, her earthy musk makes its way into my nostrils. It's not Annie's scent, but it's also not some artificial perfume either.

"When was the last time someone kissed you for real?" she asks. Her lips graze mine as they release the words.

I can't help but smile. More than anything, I'm nervous. Johanna is gorgeous by anyone's standards, but that's not something that matters when you've been with countless beautiful women. The thing that makes me nervous about Johanna is that she's real. And I haven't dealt with reality in quite some time. "Not since I was fourteen." My lips part, brush against hers. Then she exhales into my mouth. Sadly? Agitatedly? I can't tell. But she's not happy.

Then she says, "What the hell, Finnick?" She's annoyed, then. I guess I should have known.

I open my eyes, raise my eyebrows at her.

"Well, it's not like I can kiss you now and ruin this for you and your stupid girlfriend."

"Right. Because no one's already done that," I snarl. I don't know why I'm so angry. I don't care whether Johanna or anyone else kisses me.

"I'm serious, Finnick. It's bad enough that that girl doesn't have to deal with any of the shit the rest of us do. My whole family is dead. Your dad is dead. And you're still whoring around the Capitol, watching kids die. Honestly, I kind of hate your girlfriend. But if you're crazy enough to think she's it for you, I'm not going to mess that up."

"Then why were you going to kiss me?"

Even though she's whispering, she's also shouting when she says, "Because someone should!"

Then she gets up, punches the button for the elevator, and vanishes. I want to go to her room and curl up next to her and—I may as well admit it—kiss her. But the cameras will be there, and who knows how they'll spin it for television. A voice, Mags's I guess, asks, _Do you really want to kiss Johanna?_ It's not that simple. More than anything else, I want to be close to someone.

Or maybe it's that I'm not used to being rejected.

I shouldn't be surprised, anyway. Isn't this what Johanna does to everyone?

At breakfast, I have to ask Isla how we did at Opening Ceremonies. Everyone else on our team spends the day training and strategizing while I spend the day in bed.

The woman on top of me tells me I'm boring. I tell her I'm enjoying the view. Make them think you're interested in anything about them, and they'll leave you alone.

After, I take a metal picture frame from the nightstand and ask her who the gentleman in the picture is.

"My husband, silly," she says.

I inhale sharply. I really don't need this guy coming home and finding me in bed with his wife. I search the floor for my clothes. Get out of bed to look under it. The woman laughs and tells me that he's not here.

"He'll be here at some point. I'd like to be gone by then."

She scoffs. Pulls me back next to her. "He hasn't been home in years. I'm sure he won't be back today."

What? What is she saying? I'm still trying to figure out whether she might have taken off some of my clothes before we made it to the bedroom.

Then she says something that actually catches my ear. "Do you want to know a secret?" I stare into her overly pigmented eyes. And she tells me that her husband and several others left together three years ago. Left for District 13.

Now it's my turn to scoff. "You're insane," I tell her. "There is no District 13."

When she slams the door, leaving me alone, I get up and gather my clothes. Underwear. Shirt. Socks. These are all I can find. My pants and shoes must be in the hallway somewhere, and I'm not sure I want them badly enough to chance a confrontation. My alternative option is to climb out the window and make my way to the Training Center, on television, in only these clothes.

I'm fiddling with the latch when I hear the door behind me open. Before I can turn, a heavy folder whizzes into the back of my head. Its contents fall like feathers caught in the wind, drifting back and forth before coming to rest on the carpet.

"There is a District 13," she says simply.

Interested, I pick up the nearest square of paper to land face-up. A blueprint of sorts. Somehow, I know she's right. "How many people know about this?"

"More than you might think."

"Does Snow know?" I ask. Because Snow is the only one who matters.

"Snow knows everything."

The words make me uneasy. My thoughts drift to Annie, and again, I have to wonder whether it was something I did or didn't do that killed my dad. Snow has the power to make anything look like death by natural causes.

The next hour is spent with me rummaging through the rest of the paperwork while Maro, the woman, tells me about her husband's family, who spent years gathering intelligence on 13. I don't have to ask why she didn't go with them. District 13 might have weapons and hovercraft, but I doubt they have plastic surgeons and shoe stores.

As far as I'm concerned, my lovers fall into three categories. The first group includes my new friend, Maro. They are the ones who have the best secrets, secrets I don't need to ask them to tell. They are alone and bored and desperate for listening ears. They are easy.

The second group provides more of a challenge. They want nothing but sex, specifically sex with me. Physically, they take the greatest toll. But there are worse prices to pay.

Later in the week, I encounter the third, worst type. These are the ones who truly believe that what they feel for me is love. They are gentle. They are few. But they are deadly.

Her plump lips part mine. The kisses are wet and taste of candy-covered apples. Fingertips search the skin under my thin shirt. The body under mine is thin and frail-like Annie's. Morphling, probably. In a year she'll be yellow and skeletal. Now, I can't say she isn't pretty. She's young, too. Seventeen or eighteen, I guess. What I want is to take her from here before she ruins herself.

What we do can only be called making love. The touching. The kissing. The tangle of blankets and limbs even when it's over. _This is what it must be like to do this for real, _I think. It's enough to trigger my gag reflex. I need to leave.

This time, I do hit the streets in my socks.

"What the hell happened to you?" Johanna asks me later.

"Reality." Because that's what this is. Whatever I had or hope to have, that's the dream.

There's a loud cracking sound and my cheek is on fire. Johanna's breathing heavily and blinking back tears. I have to blink, too, because the burning is making my eye tear too. I should ask her what the hell she's thinking hitting me in the face, and doesn't she know I can kill her, but I know I deserve to be slapped more than I deserve to be kissed.

"Feel that?" she asks. "That was real. And that's as real as it's ever going to get here. Pain. That's it. You want love? Get it from your girlfriend."

"She's not my girlfriend," I growl.

"Whatever. Do yourself a favor and get the rest of them over with before the Games start. And when your kid dies, maybe then you'll remember what's real."

She's right. When it happens, it's as bad as it was before I had distractions. Only I don't have Mags. And when I go home, I won't have Annie. Not the way I did when Dad died. All I have is Johanna curling up next to me on the rooftop and calling me a dickhead when I put my hand on her waist.

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_Poor Finnick is becoming more and more confused. Things will start looking up next chapter, whenever I get around to writing it. Finnick and Annie certainly need to have a talk. Well, Finnick and Annie probably need to do a lot of things.  
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_I reread the previous chapters over the course of the week, and I know that this story isn't as good as it used to be. I'm going to work on making the future chapters better than this one (because I know this one isn't the best, but I had it finished and I haven't written anything else yet, so I figured I'd just put it out there)._

_Reviews are always fantastic.  
_


	24. Chapter 23

_A/N: Okay. So it's been a while. But here it is. And Chapter 24 (which features Finnick and Mags, but mostly Finnick and Annie) is pretty much ready and will be up later on today. And Chapter 25 is already in the works._

_Thank you to _**melliemoo**_, _**page**_, _**Cheaward**_, _**RandomGeek**_, _**Sublime Skies**_, _**Kraft Dinner**_, _**bella-sk8er**_, _**IoriKonaN**_, _**Forsaken Dreamt**_, _**BlackCoyote**_, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, _**jensonluvsu**_ and the anonymous reviewer who make me take the time out of my hectic schedule to continue writing this story__._

_And a HUGE thank you to _**Max Alleyne**_, who nominated this story in the Winter 2010 Hunger Games Fanfiction Awards. I am incredibly honored._

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE**

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**It shouldn't matter.

My kid is dead. My kid has been dead since the bloodbath. Thanks to Katniss Everdeen, the girl from District 4 is dead, too. Johanna's kid is dead. Most of the kids are dead.

I want to go home. I want to go home and remind the girl I love that I love her. I want to tell her I'm sorry for the things I've done. But more than anything else, I want to spend the night tangled up in her hair and freckled arms. I'm done here. Done with the women. Done mentoring. I'm done. I'm drained. I don't need to be invested in any of this.

So it shouldn't matter when Claudius Templesmith says that the Gamemakers have decided to allow two victors to be crowned this year. For one thing, he's lying. He's keeping things interesting. And I can't deny it; it is interesting. Actually, the other mentors and I can't tear ourselves away from the screens. Haymitch, who will almost definitely have at least one victor on his hands by the time it's all over, looks sickly yellow and hasn't had a drink in days. We do what we can to help, because most of us would rather see 12 win than have another freak from 2 sitting with us in a few months' time. Anyway, it doesn't matter that this Katniss girl is responsible for the death of the girl from my district; I'm rooting for her because she's a lot like me.

Well, not entirely. I'd have killed Rue, I think. I hate it, and I'd like to think that I didn't know any better at fourteen, but I killed everyone who crossed my path when I had my turn in the arena. I don't care to know how much time I've wasted playing out the Hunger Games, had Annie and I been reaped the same year. It always starts the same way—with me telling myself that I knew she was different before I even knew her name—and ends with the reminder that I worked alone in the arena.

Hearing Katniss say Peeta's name and knowing I would have left Annie to die makes me sick enough that I'm forced upstairs. And when I drag my ass back down from my bed on the fourth floor, Katniss has already found Peeta. He's looking simultaneously better and worse than ever, and I'm certain it won't matter whether the rule change is revoked. Katniss will go home alone. And that makes all of this even more unbearable.

If Katniss is me, Peeta is Annie. He's more than pure. He's incorruptible. The kid as good as sacrificed himself for the girl he loves. I doubt he would ever kill anyone if not to save his girlfriend.

There's nothing I need less right now than to watch the slow death of an innocent boy in love.

"Where the hell have you been?" Johanna asks. She stands behind my chair, half leaning on, half massaging my shoulders.

"What did I miss?" I ask.

"Just the girl on fire nearly losing her groosling over a knife wound."

That night, Katniss kisses Peeta in a way that's equally urgent and awkward. I know it's her first kiss. Already, the Capitol is stealing these things from her.

Haymitch sends them food while the rest of us voice our approval or—more often—disgust that this is what the Games have come to.

But no one leaves. It doesn't matter that we hate the Games, possibly more than anyone else in Panem. Save bathroom breaks, naps, and showers, all twenty-three mentors remain at Headquarters. Chaff offers to take part of the watch so Haymitch can sleep. Others of us want to offer the same service but don't, because Haymitch and Chaff have been friends for years, and if Haymitch doesn't want the help of a friend, he doesn't want it from me or Beetee or anyone else either. District 12's lone victor sleeps for no more than twenty minutes at a time, and only while Katniss takes over the watch in the arena.

It's clear that Katniss is District 12's only chance at victory. So people call Haymitch a lot of foul names when he sends sleep syrup to knock out Peeta and risk his would-be victor's life. She'll kill the little girl from 5 if she's lucky, but Katniss and her arrows aren't likely to beat the only remaining team of Cato and Clove. Or Thresh for that matter.

And still, I hear myself telling Haymitch that he did the right thing, because for once I'm sure that I would have done the same.

Watching Katniss die means watching Peeta die and watching Haymitch fall apart. I can't do it. And I'm not the only one. When Clove pins her to the ground and promises what's sure to be a gruesome death, most of us have the decency to look away. Johanna goes on a verbal assault of Enobaria, of which I only catch a few words. "Disgusting…wrong with you?...fucking freak…sick." Enobaria flashes her capped teeth and Johanna has to be removed from the room by Cypress, her partner from 7.

I tell Johanna later that we're no better than Enobaria for what we did in the arena. I don't add that Johanna is slightly famous for getting a little toothy herself, because aside from her constant reminders that I reek of other women, Johanna has left me alone about the things I've done.

"We're not proud of it, Finnick."

"You're a little proud," I tease, which earns me a backhand to the chest. "I can kill you, you know," I say as seriously as I can. "So stop hitting me."

When it starts to rain, my mind immediately turns to the flooded arena of four years ago. I count on my fingers: last year, District 1; before that, 2; then Johanna. Yes. Only four years since Annie won the crown. I have no interest in watching the boys battle it out, and even less interest in the half-pretend romance of Peeta and Katniss. What I'm thinking of now is how this ends.

I go to the roof and find not Johanna but the stylists from 12. Whatever conversation they were having ends with my appearance, and the guy gives me a sympathetic look, as though _he's_ the one who's caught _me_ in the act of something wrong. On the seventh floor, Johanna curses here head off when I wake her. She won't let me in. She won't sit with me. I selfishly wish more than ever that Annie could be here.

By the time that idiot Templesmith informs us that the rule change has been revoked, most of us have forgotten that this is what we expected all along. We should be used to this sort of thing, but most of us are still trying to shake Cato's screams from our heads. First there's chaos. But it's quickly swallowed by silence. All eyes that aren't on the screens focus on Haymitch, who seems to be trying to work out some difficult equation. I know he's concerned with something the rest of us can't begin to understand.

Then Katniss Everdeen threatens the double suicide of both of 12's tributes and it's over. And everything has changed. Grim smiles around the room echo my thoughts. I'm glad this is over. But I know what it means. Katniss won't get away with what she's done. Victors never do.

Haymitch should be happy, but he looks sicker than ever the night of replays. Like the rest of us, he's learned not to become attached to the kids he's assigned year after year. Only he's done it for more than twice as many years as I've done it, and these are the first kids he's bringing home. He has no choice but to be attached to them. And now he gets to watch them suffer his fate. At the very least, Katniss's family will be killed as payment for her rebellion. And then she and Peeta will become an entirely new part of the circus.

Even though it's over, I'm still trying to figure out how this ends.

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_Just a little taste of Finnick's thoughts during Katniss and Peeta's Games. Because the story would have been incomplete without it._


	25. Chapter 24

_A/N: Same thank yous apply. Plus a thank you to _**Saber**_ (in answer to your question, Cypress is an OC; Johanna mentioned that Blight "wasn't much," so I figured he wasn't her mentor or anyone else she knew well), my newest fan. _

_Here's the start of a conversation that's long overdue.  
_

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR**

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"There are people in District 13," I tell Mags in the same place where last year she told me about my dad.

My mentor's toothless mouth opens, shuts, and then curls into an ugly scowl. "Leave it. Putting yourself in danger talking like that."

"You knew?"

Her eyes tell me, _"Of course I know, dummy."_

"Stop trying to protect me," I say seriously.

Mags can't form the words quickly enough anymore, so she just moves her lips and makes some weird clicking sound to mock me. It makes my blood boil but I have to laugh because it's Mags and she looks so funny and what other almost-80-year-old would do such a thing?

"Be nice, old lady. You're forgetting that I'm your ride home from here."

She clicks at me again. "Going to ask me about Annie?"

My insides twist at the sound of her name. Away from home, it was easy to think of everything I'd like to say. Now...who knows what I'll be walking into? "I'll see her when I get there," I say, not wanting to hear it.

I try to follow Mags inside her house, because I half live there now—which is to say I sleep and eat and bathe there, even though everything I own is still in my otherwise empty house. She shoos me out and tells me to go see Annie instead. I tell her I'm not ready, push my way back inside, and ask, "What's wrong with me?"

Upstairs, the phone rings. Mags lets me pass, but I take my time climbing the stairs. The motion reminds me that I'm exhausted, and when I get to the landing, I briefly consider letting the phone ring and just going to bed.

Nightmares kept me from sleeping at all on the train. I ate and showered and watched recaps of the Games on television. But mostly, I ate because my body's been missing food in general for a while now.

"Hello?" I say into the receiver.

"What's going to happen to them?" Annie asks urgently.

"To whom?" I ask tiredly.

"To the girl and the boy."

From her voice, I can tell this Games hasn't been easy on her. I can picture her hiding under the desk, wearing a nightgown, with the phone held up to her ear through a mess of tangled hair. This is crazy Annie I'm talking to, and I'm suddenly very glad she called before I had to see her.

Annie knows as well as the rest of us do that the line isn't secure. Well, semi-normal Annie does anyway. "I don't know," I tell her half-honestly. The possibilities are endless, but I have a pretty good idea that whatever happens will be terrible.

"Are you going to come over?"

"Maybe later. I'm really tired."

"Should I come over?"

I don't know what to tell her. Of course I want to see her. But I don't want to talk about Peeta or Katniss or the horrors Annie and I experience when we're apart. "It's your call. I just need some sleep."

She says, "Okay," and hangs up without giving me any indication of whether or not I can expect her.

In my bedroom that's not really my bedroom, I strip down to my underclothes and slide in between the soft sheets. Even before I lose consciousness, my thoughts drift uncontrollably to darkness. My dreams are of rain and floods and children dying. In sleep, I'm vaguely aware of a body next to mine. I wake up with my hand on Annie's abdomen, guarding our son or daughter who will never exist.

My eyes search what they can see of her hair and skin for signs of distress. My nose picks up the first indication that something is different. Her hair smells of salt. I inhale deeply to be sure and confirm that she's been swimming recently.

Adrian promised to keep an eye on his sister and Mags for me. Actually, he jokingly promised their safety in exchange for the sort of relationship advice only I could provide. Still, I assumed he'd know better than to let her take to open water. Then again, it was only last year that I risked Annie's life by passing out on the beach during high tide.

I don't want to leave home anymore. I don't want to do a lot of things anymore.

Annie's fingers intertwine with mine on her stomach. Without turning to look at me, she asks, "Do you ever wonder whether you're a dad to some kid you'll never know?"

So, she's thinking about it too then, the baby we'll never be able to have. "I'm not," I promise. "It's the Capitol. They give me pills for that sort of thing."

"Pills?"

They're a bigger trade item than morphling among victors. Not just in the Capitol, either. Most of us would rather have kids with strangers, kids who would be spared the from future reapings, than have kids in our districts.

"Who took you swimming, Annie?"

She rolls over and rests her cheek on the back of her hand. Without looking at me, she says, "Vessel."

My hands ball into fists but my voice remains calm. "Annie, Vessel isn't exactly stable."

"Vessel pulled you out of the water when your dad died," she reminds me.

"Because Mags told him too. He's strong, but he has a child's mind, Annie. He's incapable of thinking for himself except to do harm. Adrian and Mags were okay with you going? Your dad was okay with you going?"

"We all went together. Only Vessel was the one to come in the water with me in case..."

I should feel better, but I'm furious. "He doesn't know his own strength, Annie. He could kill you."

"I don't want to fight, Finnick." Her voice is so heart-breakingly innocent that I'm caught off guard. Isn't this the girl I've been dying to see? She's alive. She's here with me. That's all that should matter.

I force my hands to relax and place one on her side.

"This time was hard on you, wasn't it?" she asks.

"I should be asking you the same thing."

"But you're all alone there," she tells me, even though I've told her a million times that I'm never alone in the Capitol.

My thoughts wrap themselves around the shell of a young girl who earned me a slap in the face from the only real friend I have away from home. And then I'm thinking of Johanna and how I kind of kissed her, and of every other thing I've done wrong.

My hand retreats at the same time that Annie asks me, "What?"

I close my eyes as my thumb and index fingers massage the bridge of my nose. "Why are you in my bed, Annie?"

She answers without hesitation. "Because otherwise I might not believe you were home." I feel her fidget a little before she adds, "And because I don't care anymore."

I have to open my eyes and make sure this isn't crazy Annie I'm talking to. Her green eyes fight to stay focused on mine while her eyebrows tighten and relax. Her bottom lip puckers as she chews on the inside of it. I smile weakly. "You say that now, but you'll change your mind," I say. Then I roll onto my back.

Annie drapes her arm around my waist and moves in closer.

I try to fend her off by telling her that I slept with a teenage girl who reminded me of her. She rests her head on my chest. "I kissed Johanna," I say.

Aside from the pain I feel as she pushes her hand into my stomach to sit up, the words have the desired effect. "Why are you trying to hurt me?"

"I'm only reminding you who you're cuddling up in bed with," I say coolly.

"I know who you are, Finnick. I've always known and it's never mattered."

She lies back down as though she doesn't care, but I can tell by her breathing that she's at least a little annoyed with me.

"If it makes you feel any better, she slapped me in the face. Pretty hard, too." I smile at another memory. "It all started because she couldn't believe that it's been almost ten years since I kissed someone for real. She was sure that you and I were at least making out on a regular basis."

She sits up again, though more gently this time. "Does President Snow think that about us?"

"What? No. Johanna's always saying I have a secret girlfriend and I said something that made her think it was you."

"Mags says Snow isn't going to pay much attention to the rest of us for a while."

History has left me no choice but to agree. Mags is always right.

"Will they ever be done with you?" Annie asks me.

I try to swallow and can't. It's something I've wondered about. I'm only twenty-three. They could easily drag me out for another ten to twenty years, and that's without surgeries. And then what? I'll be disposable. Even if they let me retire to a quiet life in District 4, will there be a life here for me then? Who knows what Annie will be like by then? And Mags...

"Please don't ask me that. Let's just be glad that Peeta and Katniss will be monopolizing the country's attention for a while."

"For how long, do you think?" she asks.

"Six months at least. Up until, during, and then probably a little while after their Victory Tour. It could be longer or shorter, depending on what Snow has planned for them."

Annie shifts, probably because she's uncomfortable about what I've said. "Finnick?"

"Hm?"

"Those pills won't last forever, will they?"

It takes me a few seconds to realize she isn't talking about the sedatives she takes once or twice a year when things get really bad. She means mine, the immobilizers that I take exactly twice a year every year to avoid any accidents. One dose can last for up to three months. Then my swimmers are free to try to fertilize the shower floor or the handful of other impenetrable places they end up. "Does it matter?"

She shrugs. "You don't ever want kids?"

"I'm glad I don't have any siblings, Annie. Of course I don't want kids."

Actually, what I want is what my father had before his world went to shit. A wife. A son. I'd be afraid to ask anything more than that, seeing what happened to my mom. But in this world, what I want will never matter. Annie's right: It's easier to pretend.

"Oh."

_Oh._ She says it like she's disappointed. To hear her say it tears at me the same way her absence did when I first found that I missed her. "Why?" I half breathe, half choke. My fingers toy with the spiraled ends of Annie's hair, and for a while, I think I've lost her to the world inside her head. "Ann?"

Her head jerks and the rest of her follows back to the present. Softly, she says, "I thought that maybe, when you were done, things could be different for us. And maybe, while the Capitol is distracted, we could try...I don't know. We could see what it would be like to be together."

I'm interrupted from being able to process what she's said by the warmth of her fingertips as they trace my jawline. Instinctively, my face tilts into hers as if drawn there by some magnet.

"Finnick?" She says my name like it's a question, like I might be the one who's out of my head.

"And if this doesn't last, this thing with District 12?" I ask mechanically. "What happens to us then? Once we cross that bridge..." I have no choice but to pause as my heart pounds and my breath catches in my throat. "Once we cross that bridge, everything will change. Once I experience the alternative, I won't be satisfied with this life or the one I have in the Capitol. And you..." It would be bad enough to hurt her by getting together with her only to leave in a few months' time. But then there's also the fact that I wouldn't exactly be making things better for Annie by getting together with her in the first place.

"I don't want to have to miss you even when you're right here," she tells me.

I don't want to keep pushing her away so I can love her from a safe distance, but I can't tell her that. Mostly, I can't bring myself to repeat the words for fear of hearing them back.

I pick up Annie's hand and scan her forearm for telltale scratches. I find nothing, push her hair aside, and check her neck. The quick breath that escapes Annie's lips would go unnoticed by anyone without my experience. My cheeks burn as I inspect the delicate skin of her throat. For some reason, she thinks this touch is something intimate. She's right, I guess. Who else but someone in love with her would touch her and look at her this way? I remove my hand, sigh. Annie's eyes lock on mine with ease.

"I—"

"Just wait, okay?" I interrupt. "Give it until the Victory Tour. Let them come here. Let me go there. And if this thing with them lasts and no one gets hurt, we'll try it too."

"I was going to say something."

"And I want you to wait."

She frowns. She can't understand that I don't want to hear it from her when I know I'll have to hear it from a stranger when I return to the Capitol. Things are changing. The game is changing. Two victors were crowned. There's life in 13. I have information that could get me killed, but that could also get Snow to release me from my duties. If there was ever a time to threaten him with it, it's now. So I don't want to hear that Annie loves me now, not while everything still hangs in the balance.

"Just wait," I repeat, because there's a chance the scales will tip in my favor. And if they do, that's when I want to hear that Annie loves me too.

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_Still to come: uprisings, more conversation, and (finally!) some sense in the romantic life of our hero. _


	26. Chapter 25

_A/N: I promise I can explain._

_Okay. I can't. But I haven't stopped writing. In the last month, I've written about 10 chapters, most of which are different versions of effects of different events at different places on the timeline. A lot of them overlap time-wise. A lot of them are going to be scrapped almost completely. I have a lot of decisions to make. _

_Honestly, the first set of events was quite horrible, with very bad things happening to Finnick, around Finnick, and by Finnick's hand. But then my boyfriend of six years proposed to me, and I regretted my poor treatment of my second greatest love._

_There's a lot of cutting, pasting, reordering, and general editing going on. But as soon as I determine the logical sequence of the best set of events, I should have 4-5 more chapters ready to post._

_Thank you to everyone who has reviewed.  
_

_Hope you're all still interested in reading._

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE**

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I'm sure that killing boats is a lot like killing people.

The little ones are easiest. Hammer long nails through the bottoms and pry them back out—the boats, not the people. A leaky boat is little more than useless driftwood.

By midmorning yesterday, Adrian had taken to spelling swear words with the resultant holes while our district's weathered fishermen started on the bigger boats, of which we in the Victor's Village own an unfortunate amount. Big boats can go several ways: engine failure, so long as the engine isn't easily replaceable; bashing in the controls with anything heavy; removing vital parts, which include anything used in maneuvering or hoisting the nets out of water.

By midafternoon, what started as a crew of more than a hundred was reduced to a few bleeding bodies on the ground and a handful of stragglers who would end up caught for not being able to run away fast enough. Today, somewhere, someone is doing something else to cause trouble. Peacekeepers will continue to retaliate.

For a while, we'll continue to outnumber them. And when we don't, the damage will already be done.

Or at least that's what the rebels in my district tell themselves.

It started with fisherman refusing to give up their catches. We've always had to give the majority of what we caught to the Peacekeepers for trade with other districts. Surplus could be kept and consumed, and part of the reason District 4 has always thrived is because there has always been surplus. We're brought up with a certain respect of nature's provisions. We never take more than we can consume or sell. But one morning, a group of men refused to surrender any of their shrimp.

We could hear the gunshots from the Crestas' house. I tried to tell Annie that it was Lyre, the new Peacekeeper who kills his time in the watchtowers by attempting to shoot dolphins. Only this time the shots were perfectly timed. Annie knew.

We were on the couch, and Annie had thrown her hair over one shoulder to fasten it in a long plait. I, having short hair and no interest in braiding it, tied knots. Time is immeasurable with Annie. I don't know how long we sat there before the shots rang out.

Annie took off running and both of us ended up in the house where she lived up until she won the Hunger Games.

I ended up bruising her ribs trying to keep her from thrashing and hurting herself even worse than that.

I'm always hurting the people I love.

Now each boat is equipped with one Peacekeeper for every three men on board. Most of us would rather see our boats at the bottom of the ocean than in the control of the Capitol's cronies.

I've long since my victory at the Games decided against causing trouble. My neighbors can do what they want, but none of them will pay for my stupidity. Or for Adrian's.

"They know you were a part of it," I tell him over lunch. "How many of us live in the Village? They would have seen you running back."

You can bet the new faces among our Peacekeepers would have Annie's brother's head if not for the fact that they're still largely outnumbered by those in District 4 who adore me and, by extension, my friends. Even those who thought me to be an arrogant prick have been nice since I started taking care of their favorite old lady and their crazy girl. Anyway, the lot of us from the Victor's Village are backed by Vessel, and that guy could easily take half a dozen bullets and a Peacekeeper or two before they drop him.

Annie places a small bag of coins on the counter in exchange for a bowl of clam chowder. We've been doing this daily, each time letting our winnings pay for the food of anyone in our vicinity. In a few days, the only seafood left will be that which has been kept frozen. We may as well enjoy ourselves while we can.

After lunch, Adrian goes to meet Brynn, the girl he's been dating who will probably become his wife. I do little to hide my envy of his normal life, sucking my teeth as he disappears through the doorway. This doesn't go unnoticed by Ariana, who puts a hand on my knee under the table. I shake the senseless thoughts and soak up the remaining cream from the bottom of my bowl in a piece of salty bread.

"How are your fingers?" I ask Annie's younger sister, disappointed at the slight annoyance still evident in my voice.

Like the brother, Ariana thinks she's accomplishing something. She spent the morning shredding nets and using wire cutters on the traps we use to catch crabs.

Her palm obscures her face from view as she holds out her hand to examine her bloodied nail beds. "Not too bad. I just hope it's enough."

"It's not," Annie says grimly.

The shootings are undoubtedly still echoing around her head, dampening all of our spirits. She's been upset about it. It doesn't help that I've been distracted with uprisings and the prospect of life in 13 and everything else that's changing.

I search Ariana's face for words. She says, "Every little bit helps," just as Gil, the old shopkeeper, replaces my empty bowl with a jam jar of what must be bourbon, judging by the color.

"It's only a matter of days before we're cleared out of our store. Take it," he says. "You're the only ones who can afford it anymore, anyway." Gil knows I don't drink. He expects I'll give the jar to Mags, who will find a way to get it to someone else who needs it.

Then, needing to get Annie off the solemn streets, we head home.

I ask Annie how her ribs are and she mumbles something about me not knowing my own strength. The resultant sting must be the way she feels when I say things about me kissing Johanna and sleeping with young girls to try to push her away. We barely make it through Annie's front door before she tells us she's tired and heads up the stairs.

As soon as I know Annie won't hear me, I explain as gently as I can that Ariana and her brother need to think before they join in the stupidity going on around our district. "People know you. It's not beneath the Capitol to execute you to set an example. Think about your parents and Annie." My voice cracks on the name of the girl I love because I can't imagine what her world would become without her family. "Mags has been through rebellious phases of our district before and it's never worked out in our favor. The best thing to come from it was that we learned to keep quiet early on and got placed on a pedestal just below Two and One just for keeping peace."

Ariana looks distracted. In a voice that's meek like her sister's she asks whether the Peacekeepers might pursue her parents to punish her and Adrian for their actions. I look around at the empty house and immediately panic.

She says, "Finnick?" in a voice that sounds certain I'm about to deliver a deadly blow.

I collapse onto the couch, not knowing what else to do. I can't leave them. I can't call Mags without alerting Annie. My temples register a crushing pain before I realize my hands have flown to the sides of my head. Ariana tugs at my elbow, says something I can't hear. Then she waves a piece of paper in front of my face. "Meeting Adrian and Brynn at the Mouettes," I read aloud. And fear of what might have happened to Annie's family is replaced with the realization that Adrian's girlfriend is the younger sister of the girl who gave me my first kiss.

Ariana smiles weakly. "I swear, sometimes you're crazier than she is." The amber liquid splashes against the sides of the jar as Ariana shakes it. "You want this?"

I shrug noncommittally and wonder whether Annie's condition really is contagious.

Ariana opens the jar, sips the amber liquid, and pulls a face. I smile wryly, take it from her, and do the same. "This has to end. I can't take living this way." My eyes drift to the ceiling. "She's miserable," I say.

Annie's sister, still standing, takes the jar from me and takes another gulp. Already, I know we'll finish the entire contents, which is a shame since drunkards are as common as clams in parts of town, and they'll be hurting in a few days without this.

"Yeah, well we all know it should be you and Annie talking about getting married instead of my brother and Brynn." She says the girls name as though it tastes bad and takes another sip. "This stuff is awful. No wonder you don't drink." She offers the jar back to me.

A half an hour later, I have to be careful with my words. Thoughts flow free and clear. Words bubble and burn like vomit. Ariana looks at me weirdly. I ask her, "What?"

She smiles and runs her fingers through the straight light brown hair that's so unlike her sister's. "Annie says a lot of funny things about you."

Probably because I'm a little drunk, I find this really amusing. "Yeah? Like what?"

"Mostly she wonders out loud about the things that go on there."

I feel myself smile. "What does she say?"

"When you're dressed up all funny with your hair looking perfect on television, she says that it makes you feel really silly. When you smile at those women, she says you think you're pretending, but that really, you're just being you. Crazy, huh?"

"I guess," I say. "But I couldn't tell you what's real and what's not. Maybe she's right. What the hell does she watch that for anyway?"

"She wants to see you. She doesn't care that you're running around with all kinds of women. She always watches until the actual Games start. She'll watch a little bit sometimes." She pauses, watching her hands as she stretches her fingers. "This last time she watched a lot."

"She's been talking about it," I say.

"She only ever talks about one other Games."

"I can't imagine how different she would be if that had never happened to her." I've thought about it, and I don't think she'd be quite like her brother or her sister. She wouldn't be like Johanna or like me-but what would we be if we weren't victors? What would I be like? Would I know then what was real?

"Not hers," Ariana says, smiling. "_Yours._"

_Blood. She smiled, even as she stumbled backward, knife handle protruding from a fast-spreading red circle on her stomach._

"Mine?"

_Blood on my hands, on the blade, on my face as I dragged my fingers across my forehead, cheeks, and nose. How? How could she be so stupid? How could she smile at me when we were put there to kill each other?_

My mouth fills with too much saliva and I swallow hard. It doesn't help.

"She says it's why you won't let her get close to you."

_I checked her weapons, hands hungry for anything I could use from a distance. To ask for a spear would have been asking too much._

_The second one, a boy, didn't go down as easily. I'd set up camp near water. He was loud, muttering curses to himself as he approached. I'd left the grass hut by the time he reached it. And as he bent to look inside, my knife plunged into his ribs. He swung blindly as he toppled over, pulled out the knife, tried to staunch the flow from the wound. I backed away and returned after the hovercaft had taken his body._

_I told myself that they had died because they were stupid. Weak. Everything we're not in my district._

_The first time I stripped down to wash myself entirely, I got a basket of fresh seafood. A smarter kid would have brought the shirt along in case the Gamemakers decided to make it snow, or at least to use as a bandage. But I left it in the stream, evidence of my presence there and of my ignorance. Used my charm to lure them into traps of both mine and the Gamemakers' designs. A cleverly concealed net. A seemingly benign watering hole filled with flesh-burrowing mutts. "You first. Tell me if the water's warm."_

_Going in, I feared the big ones, the ones who could have easily disarmed me and broken my bones. But it's the small ones who do the most damage. To watch them die, to hear them die...is to die._

_The trident came too late for me to be able to quickly kill anyone but the biggest ones from a distance._

"She remembers watching the year you won because that was also the year she turned twelve," Ariana explains. I look to her, desperate for an image of the present to replace those of the past, and see her shaking her head. "She hated to think that anyone from our district would be made to do those things."

"Yeah, well not everyone can be a shining beacon of virtue like Annie is," I say with a sarcastic smile. But even as the words leave my lips, I know that there are others like her. Katniss, protector of her innocent sister and that little girl from 11, and you may as well throw in Peeta too, because he'd have died without her. Peeta, pure as my would-be girlfriend. The kid all but killed himself for the girl who's not even his girl. Annie. Katniss. Peeta. They make the rest of us seem despicable for killing simply because we could.

I hold my hands out and am not surprised to see them shaking.

"She wants to go with you to the Capitol for Katniss and Peeta's Victory Tour," Annie's sister tells me in a near whisper. It's the voice I'm used to hearing in the Capitol, the voice reserved for secrets.

Again, probably because I'm feeling drunker by the minute and because I'm feeling everything in extremes, this is really funny. "Is she insane?" This, of course, only makes me laugh harder. "You know what I mean."

"She wants to go. She hardly remembers being there before."

"Yeah? Well that's the best thing for her."

There's the sound of someone trying to open the door. The parents or Adrian or both are home.

"You should go. Dad seeing you in this state-well, it probably wouldn't do you any favors."

Ariana stashes the bottle under the couch and takes off up the stairs in a blur that makes my head spin. I try to stand, fall back onto the couch, and try again. Next thing I know, I'm sort of crying about who knows what, and then I'm trying to get comfortable in bed and then the nightmares come before I'm really asleep. Tridents and knives. Children. Women. Floods. Enobaria tearing out Johanna's throat. Mags having another stroke. Gunshots in the distance. Even as I start to wake, I feel as though I'm ensnared in one of my own nets.

The hangover has my brain feeling like a boat dashed to bits on the reef. Every movement slams the delicate tissue against my skull in agony.

And I realize I am in a net. It takes my eyes longer than normal to focus and recognize the gray-blue walls of Annie's bedroom.

"You nearly killed me getting into bed, you know," she says, helping me untangle myself from the woven blanket. I hate her for her choice of words almost as much as I hate myself for giving in to all the repressed memories. Somewhere inside, I'm happy, too, because somehow I always end up in bed with this girl.

"You're in good spirits this morning," I say somewhat grumpily.

She smiles. "No. Just better spirits than you and my sister."

"She said you want to come to the Capitol," I say as I massage my temples. Right now, that idea is more bearable than the thought that Annie talks about me and the women and my Games. Annie does nothing to confirm or deny this. I try again with, "Nothing there is real, Annie. It will all just…confuse you."

"I just want to be with you," she says innocently. At least she has the decency not to add some comment about the Capitol version of me being the "real" me.

"You know I'll be too busy doing other things," I say pleadingly, because in the state I'm in, I know Annie will win any argument we have.

"We're not safe here, Finnick," she whispers. "I want to go with you. Please let me go. Mags will come too. And Isla and Vessel and Pisces."

"And your family?"

She has to think about this. Then she says, "I want them to run away."

I'm hungover. Annie is crazy. How could I expect any sense to come out of this conversation? I don't even bother to ask her run away to where.

Eyes closed, I feel Annie's breath closely followed by her lips on my shoulder. I'm too weak-or maybe I just don't care enough-to tell her to stop. Then she nestles her head into my neck and I tell her again that I love her.

Her fingertips dance delicately along my throat in answer. I take up her hand and kiss the fragile wrist, pale and marked with tiny white flecks where she's scratched herself that the sun has yet to fill in.

And I know she's right about needing to come with me. Only a fool would leave her unattended with everything that's been happening around us. All of us will have to go, and the rest of the Crestas, the only family left to any of our district's victors, will be defenseless. Annie's also right about the necessity of their escape. Thirteen. It'll take weeks on foot, and they won't exactly be prepared for the weather up north.

My fingers tangle themselves in Annie's hair as I try desperately not to be sick from the hangover and the decision of whether to let the brother, sister, and parents of the girl I love be killed by bullets or by cold.

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_Definitely not my best chapter or my best editing job, but I needed to get something up already. I hope it was worth the wait, if not in content then at least in length. And because I have so much material to choose from, I'm curious…do we want more cuteness between Annie and Finnick? More Mags? More Snow? Are we in the mood to have something ripped away from us? I promise I've written it all._

_Let me know you're all still with me. I miss you guys. Oh yeah, and Happy New Year!_


	27. Chapter 26

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who's still reading, especially _**Finnick Odair Kicks Ass**_, _**LoonyLovegoodLuvr**_, _**Curiously Cinnamon**_, _**Velma627**_, _**LouisaC**_, _**epoc823**_,_** melliemoo**_, _**page**_, _**Stina Whatever**_, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**Cheaward**_, _**RandomGeek**_, _**Sublime Skies**_, _**Kraft Dinner**_, _**bella-sk8er**_, _**IoriKonaN**_, _**Forsaken Dreamt**_, _**BlackCoyote**_,_**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, _**jensonluvsu**_. I hope I'm not forgetting anyone! Also, thank you for all the congratulatory messages on my engagement! I'm very excited to be marrying the love of my life._

_This is another chapter that's been hanging out on my computer for ages because I haven't felt right posting it until now. I needed to show this side of Finnick. I needed to have him face his past and learn to make decisions instead of just checking out all the time. I'm happy with it, and terrified of what you'll think of it. This is what happens to my confidence in my writing when I go from posting every day to posting every week to posting once a month._

_Hope you like it. Three more on the way. At least one more due out this weekend._

_Standard disclaimers apply._

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX**

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"Get up."

Before I'm fully conscious, I'm aware that this voice is not one that belongs in my bedroom. My eyes open and find Vessel. Next to him, dwarfed by his enormousness, is Mags. It's her lack of eye contact more than his daunting presence that alerts me that something is very wrong.

I remember the time on my birthday when President Snow came calling, and how I destroyed my headboard and tossed it out the window. I know that whatever this is, it's worse. And then my hands are crushing my temples without fully understanding why.

Vessel wrestles me out of the bed and locks my arms behind my back with ease. He's still telling me not to dislocate my shoulder by fighting when the pain shoots through me and I know it's already done.

I'm screaming, blinded by pain, when he releases me and I fall back onto the bed. Through everything else, I feel anger toward Mags for letting the lunatic in the house.

It's Annie's family, probably. And I thought I had more time. When I can finally manage it, I say, "What happened?" with my face pressed into my sheets.

I don't want to hear it from Vessel. I want Mags to be the one to tell me that Hurley Mouette was killed for taking his boat out after curfew. That his daughter's boyfriend was beaten nearly to death for trying to intervene.

I push myself onto my injured arm because the physical pain is the only thing that's held me here and allowed me to process any of this.

"How did we find out?" I ask.

I force myself to look around the room when no one answers. There, sitting in a chair and barely visible behind my mentor's stooping form, sits the eldest and prettiest of Hurley's daughters.

"Joleen," I breathe. I search my own pain for the words, but I know from experience that there are none that can reach her. She turns away and I know from the gesture that there's something else I'm not being told.

"They broke his back," Vessel says. "Don't want to move him."

I'm about to ask who cares if they move him if he's already dead when the realization hits me. Even the pain in my arm blurs into nothingness.

Bizarrely, my head fills with images of me and this yellow-haired girl in my room making love. But then I'm transformed into Adrian and Joleen to Brynn, and then Adrian is someone else whose name and significance I can't immediately place. I open my eyes just as a Peacekeeper wielding a mace enters my mind. Still, I can't block the picture of the crumpled form of the tribute, eyes open, back broken. Me, waiting for the cannon to sound.

It's clear then, why she came here. Everyone knows about my complete intolerance when it comes to seeing others in pain.

"Fuck," I cry as my arm dangles, limp and painful. Tears spill over my lashes. For the first time ever, I see Mags cry.

I watch like an outsider as Vessel takes my arm and rotates it until the muscles pull it back into place. Then he tears a strip of fabric from my sheets and fashions a sling.

I don't even think about Annie until I get to Hurley's. _They want me to kill your brother_, I think. And that's all I can think.

Joleen leads me and Vessel through the night, through the shop, past the two sisters whose names I no longer know. Upstairs, Brynn sits in the corner on the tiled kitchen floor, only you wouldn't notice her at all if not for the trail of blood that starts at one of the two bodies on the floor and ends on her bare feet and knees. The room smells of blood and waste. No hovercraft are coming to remove the dead.

Adrian, smaller than Hurley, lies twisted in a heap. Tears streak his face and form a puddle under his cheek. Blood forms a pool under his torso.

He looks so much like his sister. Same eyes. Same curls. Same tortured expression I've so often seen on Annie.

I'm on my stomach on the ground next to him, pleading for him to tell me what to do.

"I can fix this," I say in something between a cry and a whisper. "I know things. I know people. I can...I can..." I'm Annie. Inarticulate in my madness. Madness. Anger. I sort of shout, "What the hell were you thinking?"

I watch blood trickle from the hem of Adrian's shirt. My guess is that it was a bullet that shattered his life.

He's too calm when he says, "You can't let them see me like this. It'll kill them."

It'll kill Annie anyway when she learns that her brother is dead. I won't be the one to take away her last chance at seeing him alive.

"Baby, Finnick can get someone to fix this," Brynn says.

"I'll bleed to death before anyone can get here anyway," he says. "Just...just make it quick."

I'm crying and I can hardly think and I actually laugh because the whole thing is so ridiculous. "You're all crazy."

Brynn stands up and leaves without a word. I guess she can't bear to watch the suffering of the dying either. This is why he needed me here. No one else who loves him is desensitized enough to look at this objectively and know what has to be done. I'm the only one who loves him who's got the experience to give him what he wants.

Adrian looks at my hands, tucks in his chin, indicating his neck. There's a wordless argument in which I beg Vessel, stronger, dumber, out-of-touch Vessel, to do it for me. I don't know why I bother. It's supposed to be me. Then my hands move reluctantly and my left arm catches in its sling. I remove it and let my fingers register the rapid pulse, the sharp Adam's apple. I look away, unable to do it, unable to do anything. Useless. I am useless. I shake my head dizzyingly. My hands leave Adrian's neck and fly to my temples. Adrian coughs and grimaces in pain, twisting his neck. Begging.

"Please," he chokes out.

In this moment, I love Adrian at least as much as I love Annie. I force myself to curl my fingers around his throat, certain this will kill me before it kills him.

"Hey," he whispers. "I'm sorry." Then he closes his eyes and I squeeze.

When I finally release my grip, I roll onto my back and count myself the third of the dead men on the floor.

I don't black out. Blacking out would be too easy. Instead, I find myself in Annie's world. Haunted by visions of the dead. I think that maybe I am dead. In death, all you can hear is the sound the dying make. The next thing of which I'm fully aware is that, and it makes me wish I were really dead, or at least deaf. In the haze of sedatives I separate the layers of pain that are Annie's, Ariana's, and their parents' cries of pain. I try to cover my ears and drown the sound, but my left arm's back in its sling and I'm too much of a wreck to get it out.

The familiar soupy smell of Mags's kitchen brings me home, and I realize that I _am_ home. Vessel has brought me home again. It's why they bothered to let him in on any of this in the first place. I squeeze my eyes more tightly shut for fear of opening them and finding that none of this is a nightmare.

The next time I come to must be the middle of the next night. It's pitch black and quiet. My left hand catches in its sling again, a testament to the cruel reality of the last twenty-four hours. A few houses down, Annie is...what? Not crying anymore, I don't think. More likely, she's not coping at all, probably sitting in her rocker, bloodying her fingers and arms.

How will I ever be able to look at her, given what I've done? What I've done...what I've...

That horrible sound from earlier returns, deep and guttural, the sound the dying make. I want to cover my ears again until I realize that I'm the one screaming. In the darkness, I hear Mags's uneven tread. She curls up next to me quietly, the way Annie might if only I hadn't been the one to snuff out her brother's life.

Memories of the days following my father's death fill my head. Annie. Lying with me on the floor. Coming with me to the graveyard. Always by my side. Alone now in her own darkest time.

I don't deserve her. I won't ever deserve her. And now she'll never want me.

_"I know who you are."_ The words bounce around my brain. For the first time in a long time, I'm sure she doesn't know me better than I know myself. If anyone holds that position now it's...

"Mags?" I ask hoarsely. "You'll check on her in the morning, won't you?"

A bony finger jabs my ribs. So that's over too, then, Mags taking care of me.

I can't sleep, so I reach into my nightstand drawer, retrieve a short length of rope, and attempt to tie respectable knots with my injured arm in the darkness. I must fall asleep, because the sun is up when I open my eyes, and I can hear Mags rummaging through the cabinets downstairs.

I'm only able to get out of bed because I'm always afraid my mentor will fall and break her neck and I really, really don't need that.

I'm halfway down the stairs before I realize I'm still in yesterday's blood-stained clothes. I take of the shirt and, with it, the troublesome sling as I descend. My shoulder looks bruised and I know without moving it that my range of motion is shit, but it feels okay. Meds, probably.

I've barely touched the floor when I'm nearly pushed backward as Annie's hair in my face and arms around my neck threaten to suffocate me. I crane my neck to look into the room behind her and see that her mother and sister are here too.

"Annie, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, Annie." And because no more than ever, I need her to know who she's embracing, the words come out before I can stop them. "I killed him, Annie. I killed him. I killed him."

She lets go, lets me fall into a sitting position on the stairs. Through my fingers, I watch her feet back away.

"Finnick," Annie's mother starts. I try to listen. "Brynn said he asked for you. He knew you would understand."

Her voice dies out there, and through everything, I'm amazed at how much she sounds like her daughter. I neither confirm nor deny what she's said; haven't I already admitted this much anyway?

I look up, see Ariana's and her mother's tear-filled eyes trained on me. Annie has her face buried in her sister's sweater. Mags is squinting at a collection of bottles, trying to find something for Annie or maybe something for me.

"I guess," I say. "Yeah."

Then she's next to me on the steps, Annie's mother, putting her hand on mine, wrapping her arm around my back, kissing my bare shoulder before laying her head on it.

I hear the door close and see that the girls have gone. I wish I had something to say to the mother, something to make up for her loss and excuse what I've done. Hatred burns through my insides, and I realize it's directed at Adrian for leaving me nothing to tell his parents and sisters.

"I'm sorry." I repeat the only words he left any of us.

"I know," she says quickly. Then she's gone too.

Mags leads me up the stairs, which is really more like me helping her up the stairs because I'd rather go with her than ever let her up the stairs alone. She runs the shower, then leaves me alone in the bathroom.

The pain in my shoulder must have been worse than I thought, because when I wake again, my entire left side is in agony. Mags tells me that between me and Annie, the medicine ran out. I'm in a sturdier sling now.

"Come on," she says. "Late already."

Unlike my mother, father, and brother, Adrian and Hurley are dumped into the sea. Deviants. Lawbreakers. These words, taught to me in childhood, transcend time to echo in my ears now. Death by Peacekeepers warrants no marker on your grave.

I've always thought it better to be fish food than worm food though.

Mags and I are forced to watch the whole thing from a distance. Only immediate family members of those sentenced to this kind of burial are allowed to watch. "Don't want to glorify their crimes by having a proper funeral," I remember a faceless voice from my past saying. Beatings, murders, all of that can take place in the center of town for all the Peacekeepers care. Honoring the dead is another story entirely.

There are more bodies than just Adrian's and Hurley's, more families than the Crestas and Mouette's out on the docks today.

I look at Mr. Cresta and think of Adrian, bloated and broken at the bottom of the ocean. Even from this distance, the man looks a wreck. Where was he, I wonder, when his wife and daughters came to Mags's? Does he know what they know?

They try to pull Annie away from the scene, but she just collapses onto the ground, shaking with grief. My bare feet and useless arm throw me off balance as I run over rocks and sand.

"Come on," Mrs. Cresta says, and she pulls what's left of her family away, back up the hill toward Mags and home.

I sit on the ground. I'm always sitting on the ground next to someone's crumpled form. Annie won't talk to me. She won't look at me. My right hand slides around her. Tears start pouring. Words start pouring. I'm sorry. I love you. Her name. Nothing calls her back.

It happens quickly. Something cold presses into my good shoulder. I know without turning that it's gun. I'm not supposed to be down here.

"Get up," the Peacekeeper says.

The feel of the metal calls me back to another time. Another set of weapons. _Gain their trust first. _So my hand abandons Annie and raises in pretend surrender. I stand slowly.

"I'm sorry," I tell the Peacekeeper. "She's not right. She doesn't under—"

And then I turn, grab the barrel of the gun, and twist it, effectively breaking my would-be assassins trigger finger before he gets a chance to squeeze. He backs up, leaving me with a gun I don't want and a dozen more guns aimed at me from across the beach.

They're going to shoot me. They're going to break my bones and puncture my organs while Mags and Annie's family watch. They failed at forcing Annie to watch her brother die. Now Annie will be splattered with my blood.

I need to see her face. I need to see her smile. I look down and see her hugging my calf, looking up at me. All I can offer her anymore is a single defeated smile. And I toss the weapon into the water.

Annie flinches at the sound of the splash.

When the Peacekeepers don't shoot, I offer Annie my hand, pull her upright, and hold her hand as we walk toward home. And when I start to feel her slipping back into darkness, I pick her up and carry her. I carry her right through the crowd. Right through the Peacekeepers. They do nothing. They won't do anything. Not to me. Not unless I shoot first.

"I'll find a way to keep them safe when we're gone," I tell Annie. She's smart. She knows there's no way in hell I'm going to the Capitol without her. She knows her sister and parents are next.

She tightens her grip on my neck so that it's hard for me to breathe. My shoulder is in agony. None of it matters.

I need to keep my word. I need to protect what's left of them. I can only think of one thing that might work.

* * *

_Because I don't think all the whoring around could have possibly been the only thing Beetee was talking about when he made the comment about everything Finnick's been through..._

_This is definitely a case where I need rather than want reviews. Leave some love and, okay, you can leave your criticisms too. But mostly, leave love of Finnick finally accepting his cruel reality instead of just hating himself all the time, and of me finally posting another chapter, even if it is a shitty one._

_Also... I'm seriously considering writing a oneshot spin-off that's basically Johanna talking about her relationship with Finnick over the years. I just love writing her waayyyy too much, and I'd love to explore her perspective of everything that's gone on between them. What do we think?_


	28. Chapter 27

_A/N: Thank you everyone who made me feel awesome about last chapter. My confidence in my writing always goes to shit when I stay away for too long. After the last chapter, I went weeks without writing, tried to post the next thing that made sense, realized I hated most of what I had written, and then started from scratch this week. This is what I ended up with. Next chapter will follow shortly after (for real this time...it's Spring Break and the start of a new marking period, so I FINALLY have time for my writing).  
_

_Huge thanks go out to _**LexidaLou**_, _**brooke13243546**_, _**PeetaMellark'sKatniss**_, _**Where the Story Ends**_, _**TrappedInHerOwnWorld**_, _**Saber**_, _**LittleSpark**_, _**F****innick Odair Kicks Ass**_, _**LoonyLovegoodLuvr**_, _**Curiously Cinnamon**_, _**Velma627**_, _**LouisaC**_, _**epoc823**_,_** melliemoo**_, _**page**_, _**Stina Whatever**_, _**Max Alleyne**_, _**Cheaward**_, _**RandomGeek**_, _**Sublime Skies**_, _**Kraft Dinner**_, _**bella-sk8er**_, _**IoriKonaN**_, _**Forsaken Dreamt**_, _**BlackCoyote**_,_**mockingbird-manikin**_, _**lilangel**_, _**Desmonda-sight**_, _**SmartKookie**_, _**Shar**_, _**Sputnik**_, _**Hahukum Konn**_, _**Steff Malfoy1**_, _**Whisperheart**_, _**xparamorexbabex**_, _**caisha702**_, _**KRK the JRK**_, _**tell it to the sky.**_, _**Blue**_, _**The Other Perspective**_, _**Adrenaline Write**_, _**PK9**_, _**Total .Witch ****.17**_, _**rain-on-sunday**_, _**TheSeamGirl**_, and _**jensonluvsu**_, (gosh, I hope that's everyone!) without whom I would not still be doing this. Thank you for sticking with me, even when I disappear for weeks at a time.  
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**CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN**_  
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Underwater the edges of everything are blurred. The tide drags and rearranges the earth. Nothing lasts.

In grief, emotions are alternately dulled and amplified in dizzying shifts. The body is as numb to happiness as it is to the unbearableness of pain. When the pain comes, it comes in waves that will down a grown man, and with an undertow that will drag him beyond the reach of help. Where one day ends and another begins is indistinguishable. There are only those periods of intensity and, even more rarely, those times I feel I actually have my head to break up the periods of numbness.

Like the time I called President Snow. I understand now why everything affects Annie the way it does; my madness has created periods where I become hyper-focused on past events. I think about Adrian and I feel his already cold skin. I think about Snow and hear his snakelike voice.

"Ah, Mr. Odair. To what do I owe the pleasure," his voice lingered like a hiss on the word because of its obvious connotation, "of your voice?"

His laugh made me shift uncomfortably in my chair. I dragged my finger across the desk, leaving a trail in the thick dust that covers nearly everything in my house in the Victor's Village. I told him there was something I needed.

"I have to admit that I knew as much from the start. Actually, I've been expecting to hear from you for a while. I understand that you have other concerns, dear boy, but please, permit me to ask how your shoulder is mending."

Looking back, every part of what he said was meant to unhinge me. Him acting—or maybe not acting at all—like he'd been expecting me. Him calling me a boy after everything, everyone he's forced on my body. And then the indication that he knew about my injury.

"I do hope you'll be back to your best when it comes time to perform."

"You know as well as I do that no one will complain if I'm not, President Snow."

"It's true. You are, as I'm told, the best there is. But if I'm being honest, I have to say I'm more worried about how your mental state will affect your performance. You're down another one, aren't you? How did poor Annie take her brother's death?"

Anger over Annie's name spoken in his voice kept me from losing control. "I thought we had agreed to leave Annie out of things."

"Fair enough. How are you coping then, Finnick? It must be so hard for you. First your father. Now this. I hope you don't think I had anything to do with what happened to your friend. It was never my intention for him to die. Only," he says slowly, "for his back to be broken."

Before I could internalize the statement and fabricate an intelligible response, he continued. "Like your injury, I'm sure this won't have an effect on your reputation here, but I have to wonder what poor, fragile Annie will think when she finds out that you were the one to kill her brother. I have to confess my own surprise when I learned what you'd done. I thought your days of killing ended at the Sixty-Fifth Hunger Games."

"How did you—?"

"Tell me something. How is it that you expect to barter for their protection when it seems that what they need protecting from is you?" When I didn't answer, he said, "Oh, it wasn't too difficult to deduce. He was alive when my Peacekeepers left. You went in. You had to be carried out. And the boy was dead."

"He'd have been dead anyway. Your new Peacekeepers aren't exactly disciplined."

"My Peacekeepers aren't the only undisciplined ones in District Four. There have been acts of rebellion there, acts which threaten to destroy the balance we've maintained for nearly seventy-five years. Boats being sunken, for instance. That just won't do."

Changing the subject was my only hope. "What are your plans for the Everdeen girl and her 'lover'? I doubt you want them touring the districts, threatening the balance, as it were."

"No. No, I don't. Fortunately, I have you in place in District Four and others like you stationed around Panem. Unlike your friend Ms. Mason in Seven, you still have people to protect. You will do so by preventing further acts of dissent."

"I'm only one man."

"I think we've already established that you are more than a mere man. Sex god. Protector of the innocent. Mercy killer. You'll do it Mr. Odair, or your girlfriend's sister will be next."

Recalling the conversation makes it simultaneously easier and more difficult to focus on the future: easier in that it gives me purpose, harder in that it highlights my powerlessness.

"Stop thinking about it," Mags tells me, calling me back to the present. I'm shuffling the food around my plate the way Annie does. In many ways, I am Annie more than I am myself.

"I can't help it," I tell her.

Mags's words come out slow and measured. I know she's exerting enormous effort. "Snow wants you to feel responsible. He wants you to fail."

"But I won't. I'll do anything. I have to." It's the child in me, the one only my mentor can elicit. "I have to try."

"Finnick," she says. She nods her head almost imperceptibly, and her gaze articulates everything her mouth can't. That if Snow wants them dead, he'll have them. It won't matter what I do.

"So if you're so wise, old lady, tell me what I'm supposed to do."

Again, she takes her time with the words. Tastes them, feels them out. "Take care of Annie. Let them go."

I look at her and notice for the first time the bluish tinge her eyes have taken. I wonder silently whether her vision is as blurry as my mind. I've never known this side of my mentor, this side that must be responsible for her victory nearly sixty-five years ago.

It's why she's never been married and why she's always taken such good care of the rest of us. She alone knew better than to grow attached to those she couldn't protect. The rest of us brought our families to the Victor's Village, only to watch them die. Three who won after Mags are dead. One is alone and blind. One lost her child and husband. At least two are unstable at best, insane at worst. Some days, I count myself insane too. Other days I am just an orphan.

Victor. Slave. Orphan. Murderer. Madman. The list is ever-growing.

The door opens and Annie comes in, bringing with her the scent of fruit. When I look up at her, she explains, "They've just got a whole shipment of food in. Probably don't want us to look like we're starving when Katniss and Peeta come."

"Probably," I agree. At least for today, she's taking all of this better than I am. This is the case most days. I don't know whether to attribute this to desensitization from years of madness or the simple fact that she wasn't there to see it. She's having trouble with the water again, though. On the day we took off our shoes and waded in the surf one day, she started coming out with all this nonsense about having Adrian's blood on her. She scrubbed her feet until they bled, which only made matters worse.

"Smile," she demands, all traces of madness gone from her voice. "The people of your district have food to eat. That's more than you could say yesterday." I love her for trying to be for me what I can only hope I've been for her all this time.

More Peacekeepers are arriving daily. People are fearful. People are behaving. That makes my job of protecting Annie's family a lot easier. And now people won't go hungry.

Annie suggests that we take a walk. She thinks that seeing people eating and smiling will help me. We spend our morning wandering aimlessly through streets of houses the size of our kitchens.

"My parents used to live here," she says of one house, forgetting that I've been there before. "Best not to go inside though."

I stop and examine the weathered structure. This is where I bruised her ribs, but before that—ages ago, really—Annie played with her brother and sister here, ran through this front door after school. I can't blame her for walking away as I stare through the glass window into the kitchen and try to picture the Annie I briefly knew.

"Come on," she calls.

I jog to catch up to her and slide my hand around her waist. She twists away.

"Tell me what it's like. I want to know what to expect." She's talking about the Capitol. She's been fixated on it lately.

"The colors are blinding," I tell her. "It's like everything there serves to stimulate your senses. There's every type of food you can imagine. People in feathered and scaled costumes, reeking of perfume. You'll sit with Mags and Isla and Johanna and a few of my other friends."

"Johanna?" she repeats skeptically.

"Her bark is worse than her bite. She's funny, anyway. She'll make you laugh."

"And where will you be?"

She knows the answer, so I don't know why she has to make me say it. "Making my rounds."

"And Mom and Dad and Ariana?"

This is where it gets tricky. I need to wait until Haymitch comes with his kids. I need to talk to him. He knows things. He can help me. "They'll be home with Vessel and Pisces. Vessel's the best protection any of us can offer."

"I thought you didn't like him."

"He's too strong for his own good is what I said." I flex my shoulder, which has returned to its full range of motion if not its capacity for strength. Really, I've had nightmares about the guy taking hold of someone's neck and ripping out their entire spinal column. That's the kind of thing he's capable of doing. What's scary is that it wouldn't affect him. He doesn't care about anyone, except maybe Mags.

"You'll sleep with me on the train?" she asks innocently.

"I don't think so. I don't know. We'll see." Her brows wrinkle as she frowns. "People will be watching. But hey, we can stay up all night like we did the last time. We'll sit in the dining compartment."

This makes her smile. Then I think of something that upsets me.

"What's wrong?" she asks.

"They'll pretty you up on the train. They'll do your hair and makeup and put a fancy dress on you." I take her calloused hand in mine. "They'll smooth out your skin."

"They'll do all of that to you too."

"But I'm used to it. I'm not me when I'm there, so it makes sense that I shouldn't look or feel or smell like myself." Then I remember my conversation with Ariana. "But I forgot: you think I'm more of myself in the Capitol," I tease.

"You are. You think and worry too much at home. There, you're free."

"I'm hardly free, Annie. I sleep with people for payment."

"But you've come to terms with that. And you're free." I stare at her disbelievingly and she smiles nervously, tucks a curl behind her ear, and looks away. "You think I'm crazy."

I laugh for the first time in a long time. I guess I've come to terms with a lot of things. "I'm able to accept the things I've done and the things I will do because I have you. Otherwise, who knows? I'd be worse off than you." I'm about to say that I might gauge out my eyes like Pisces, only that would scare Annie. Anyway, it's what I see, what I actually see, that keeps me from letting the images in my head drive me insane.

The thing is, she's right about the freedom that comes from coming to terms with everything I've done. I used to think of myself as a killer and a monster. A whore. Then I killed a man because I couldn't bear to have him suffer. As much as I hate that fact and hate myself for doing it, it's put everything else into perspective.

I hate that I've killed anyone's sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. I hate that I couldn't prevent Adrian's back from being broken. But letting him bleed to death, letting his family's memories of him be destroyed by the sight of him at that moment, would have been crueler than killing him myself. It was Snow's plan to break Annie and therefore break me by breaking Adrian's back. Everything happens for a reason.

At fourteen, I thought I was in control. At sixteen, I knew I was largely mistaken. And by nineteen, I learned that power came in giving up all sense of control. Thinking about any it equaled pain.

Annie and I are different only in that I control my checking in and checking out. Up until recently, I've chosen when to be present in my own body and when to let go of cruel realities. It took losing that ability and having Annie's brother's blood on my hands to remind me that none of this was what I wanted. I didn't choose any of what I am. If I was the monster I always believed myself to be, I wouldn't have done the things I've done to save the people I love. Everyone else would have paid. Even killing Adrian was a choice.

"You'll be okay in the Capitol, right?" What I'm really asking is whether she'll have some sort of fit or nervous breakdown. We'll have everything from sleep syrup to morphling in case Annie needs help keeping control, but I still feel under-prepared.

The worst that can happen is this: Annie loses it, makes a scene, and needs to be taken care of in one way or another by forces inside the Capitol. This happens while I'm off in some bedroom or bathroom dealing with my own demons. Mags, old and weak, tries to help and hurts herself. Snow sees all of this as a complete disaster and someone I love is killed as a result.

Of course, there's another variation in which Snow decides to use Annie in the same way he's using me. I kill him, and am killed myself, but not before I can reveal everything I know.

I'm not happy about the idea of Annie being within Snow's reach, but I'm willing to risk her proximity to Snow to have her close to me. I'm useless from a distance, but his strike is deadly from anywhere.

I realize Annie's been quiet for too long and that she's probably waging wars in her head. My hand finds her wrist and squeezes. "Hey, crazy. Come back to me."

She shakes herself free of whatever thought had her tangled up inside and says, "They're going to die, aren't they?"

She means her parents. Even if they survive, I'm going to make Annie and everyone else believe that they're dead. Everything will be better that way. "I don't know," I confess.

What I do know is that I can't protect them. I couldn't protect my father. What happened with Adrian was quite the opposite of me protecting him.

_"Let them go."_

I should. It would be best if I could let them all go. The mother, May, who is so much like Annie. The sister, Ariana, who I've come to love as a friend. And the father, William, who would kill me for looking at Annie the wrong way but let's me go to her room and sleep in her bed because he understands better than anyone else how much she means to me.

Years ago, he told me, "I know," as he showed me out of the house. Then, I had no idea what he meant. Now...

"How's your dad coping?" It's a risk, I know, to bring it up.

"Mom has to take care of him a lot," is all she says.

I know because Annie's mom has said as much when Mags and I have talked to her about the options for escape that it's hard for him to be around me. The husband she describes is reminiscent of the Annie I never wanted to know until Mags forced me to see her. Thinking about it, I can't help but be amazed at the strength my father showed after losing half his family. But I guess violent deaths take a different toll.

I try again to touch Annie's waist. She pulls away. It's these little things that let me know her opinion of me has changed. But if Johanna asked me now, I'd probably admit that yes, I have a girlfriend and her name is Annie, and she's crazy and I love her very much.

"You're planning something to save them," she says.

I don't answer. It's not that I think she'll say anything if she knows. I just don't want her to know anything about anything. Ignorance isn't bliss. Ignorance, for Annie, is confusion. Ignorance is safety.

She asks me to tell her more about the Capitol as we take the scenic route that keeps us far from the house where four blond girls live and work without their father. I keep wanting to take care of them until I remember that I am not their friend. I hardly know even Joleen. So I tell Annie about the people. I tell her not to drink from any strange glasses or eat anything she can't identify by sight. I don't tell her it's because I'm terrified he'll poison her.

Then I ask her, "Can I please hold your hand before I forget what it feels like?"

"Prepare me," she says, changing the subject back to the Capitol.

"I don't want to," I say tiredly. "I don't want to have to think about the surprises he'll have waiting behind locked doors for me. I don't want him close to you."

For some reason, thinking of Annie and Johanna sitting at the same table reminds me of the time Johanna took my seat and I yelled at her. A laugh erupts from my gut and Annie looks at me, puzzled.

"Johanna is a piece of work. She'll try to push you. Push back. If you can do that, you'll be okay."

"And you? How will you be, Finnick?"

"I'm fine," I say, avoiding the actual question about the future. Today, the people of my district have food and I can laugh with the girl I love. But the tides will change and, again, they'll take with them everything that makes my life recognizable as my own. It's only a matter of days until we go to the Capitol and I get pulled under all over again.

* * *

_Nothing much, but it's something, and just to write anything worth posting makes me happy. I feel like I'm back in the groove of writing, so hopefully the words will keep flowing. I'm also working on a separate piece from Johanna's POV all about her friendship with and feelings toward Finnick over the years. I have no idea when I'll be able to write something I'm proud of on that end but it's definitely in the works._

_Please review and let me know you're all still with me.  
_


	29. Chapter 28

_A/N: Thank you to everyone who has reviewed and given me a reason to put time aside to do what I love._

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**CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT**

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"Are you nervous?"

It's one of those things Annie says that makes me sorry I didn't think to say it first. Annie is the one who is new at this whole victor thing. Since the year she won, she's been to exactly zero events pertaining to the Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta's arrival in our district marks the first time Annie's been in the presence of victors from outside of 4 in four years. In a few days, she'll revisit the Capitol that she hardly remembers ever visiting before. It's she, not I, who has reason to be nervous.

Her pinky hooks around mine in a gesture that's something like hand-holding. With Mags's head barely reaching the point between our shoulders and the other victors from 4 at our backs, even the cameras won't notice. Ultimately, the want to smile at her thoughtfulness wins out against the fear that has otherwise been etched upon my face. I am nervous. Annie knows me well enough to know that; her gesture is her attempt at comforting me.

I'm afraid. I'm afraid for Annie in the Capitol. For her family while we're gone. For what the people of District 4 will do if Peeta and Katniss inspire in them the same passion that I know must have cost more than a few people in District 11 their lives.

On stage, the boy still limps a little and does all the talking. I can't look at him without wondering how else he'll be changed by all of this. Instead, I focus on Haymitch, who's as sober as I've seen him and looking that much worse for it. Next to me, Annie has eyes only for Katniss.

"She's beautiful," she whispers.

Katniss is plain like Annie is. You can tell that she'd probably only be moderately pretty without makeup. She has the dark-haired, light-eyed look I've seen on most of District 12's tributes. To Peeta, she probably looks like home, the same way Annie does for me. So in a way Annie's right about her being beautiful. I don't say this to Annie though.

I'm not paying attention to what Peeta is saying. It's nothing I haven't seen him say on television as he visited seven other districts. Instead, I play this game where I exhale and blow Mags's hair forward. The first time, she just fixes it. The second time earns me an elbow in the gut. After, my mind drifts back to the source of my nervousness. Tonight, Haymitch will give me a better idea of what to expect in the coming days, weeks, and months. I'll learn whether other victors and their families have had losses as we have. I'll have a better idea of what to tell Annie to expect in the Capitol.

Peeta only reclaims my attention when he stops talking to give Katniss a lingering kiss. I'm close enough to notice the way his eyebrows wrinkle as though he's in pain even though he's leaning into her and she's the one pulling away. I can feel my face getting hot with anger, and at first I think it's because I'm jealous of Peeta for being able to kiss the girl he loves in public, but I quickly realize his fate might be worse than mine. Having Annie forced upon me against her will for the sake of the cameras would be worse than not having her at all.

There's a sharp pressure on my wrist that forces me to release Annie's hand. Vessel. Annie massages her pinky and I realize that I must have squeezed or twisted it in my anger. It makes me think of Snow. _"How is it that you expect to barter for their protection when it seems that what they need protecting from is you?"_

Mags turns and hugs me. Looking around, mostly everyone here is smiling and cheering, and hugging. We must look like we're celebrating Peeta and Katniss's love with the rest of them. Around us, they chant Katniss's name. She's the one they love. She's the one who had the idea that saved them both and sparked the rebellion

My hands are in fists. I want to go home. I want to go home and throw or break something. I want to break Haymitch's neck for bringing them here to remind our people to fight back.

Next to Mags and me, Annie is clapping and smiling and crying all at once.

I don't get to go home. Not really. After the display in the square, the crowd thins and I deliver Annie and Mags back at the Crestas' and offer Annie's father an apologetic look that will never begin to compensate for the pain I've caused his family. Then I go to Mags's, dress for dinner, and leave. The chance to find out what's going on in the rest of the country is worth the hefty price of my attendance.

I've just caught a glimpse of the newly-engaged couple when two sisters—or maybe they only look alike because they've both had nose-shrinking and lip-plumping surgeries—on the camera crew request a video tour of my house. They hook their arms through mine and bat their unnaturally long eyelashes, letting me know they have no interest in anything but my bedroom. I can only assume that they serve the dual purposes of keeping me away from Haymitch and recording footage that will let President Snow know just how well I'm mending after everything with Adrian.

The women videotape and act in turns. It makes me sick to do these things in my father's house, to do them with Annie only a few houses away. And at the same time, it's easier than it should be. After everything that's happened, shutting down mentally is a welcome relief. This feels...it feels routine. Normal. Good. I tell myself that maybe this could save us. When he sees, Snow will have no reason to doubt my willingness to play this part.

I'm not in the mood to talk to anyone—even Haymitch—when I re-enter the dinner party with a woman on each arm, the three of us smiling like guilty teenagers. Katniss watches me while Peeta watches her. I'm pretty sure she despises me, but I blow her a kiss just in case. She scowls and turns back to her pretend lover.

Haymitch puts a hand on my shoulder, rescuing me from the women. He says, "You look good, Finnick." He pulls out my jacket to examine me. "Still a little thin, I'm afraid. This is a lovely suit."

The whole exchange strikes me as odd until I feel him slip something into my vest pocket. "And you," I reply, "finally getting to travel the country. How's that treating you?"

Haymitch hands me a glass of something sour and wrinkles his eyebrows knowingly. "You know me. I'd be happier at home with a bottle."

The burning in my throat helps push the words out. "But surely there's a lot to see, a lot that's changed since you last made your rounds."

His eyes are locked on mine when he says, "Yes. A lot has changed."

To avoid suspicion, I wrap an arm around Haymitch's shoulders and say loudly, "So, when do you think these two will be married? How much time do I have to convince Peeta to make me his best man?"

They don't stay long but then again I never expected them to. Peeta and Katniss may bring joy and good cheer to Panem, but in districts like mine, where so many terrible things have happened, they also bring a dangerous hope for change.

After the train leaves, I go back to my father's house and easily make myself wait until the bathtub is full before I undress and remove Haymitch's note from my pocket. In the hot bath water, swirls of oil rise from everywhere the Capitol women touched my skin. I read the writing quickly first, absorbing none of it. I am looking only for news of immediate danger, but there is none. It takes more focus than I'm prepared to use to read the writing a second time.

I leave the bath with three pieces of information: first, other districts are on the brink of uprisings; second, sources say there is an escape route through District 4, though whether or not anyone from District 4 has actually made it to District 13 is unclear; third, Johanna is safe in 7. I drown the paper; the ink bleeds from the page, tinting the draining water an almost undetectable blue before vanishing down the drain.

The path to 13, Haymitch claims, begins with something of a hole in the northern wall. The edges around the hole are sharp, and there's always the danger of drowning, but anyone who has escaped to the outskirts of other districts from 4 has left this way. Annie's family will go the same way. I will tell them the way and that they need to practice both swimming in tight spaces and holding their breath. Other than that, I want to know nothing about their plan. The less I know, the easier I'll be able to lie to Annie.

I dress in ill-fitting pajamas—the good ones are all at Mags's by now—and sleep in my father's bed. In the morning I will consult my mentor and lay out the plan with Annie's family. After that, I have to let them go and let go of any responsibility I feel for them. I can't save everyone, and trying is only going to compromise my ability to save Annie. I fall asleep to the sound of guns firing at what I can only hope are fish.

* * *

_So I completely forgot about this chapter, and as it turns out, it's actually the NEXT chapter that's one of my favorites. Editing that over the next few days so stay tuned! Reviews are always fantastic, and I'm looking forward to breaking 200 for this story very soon...so if you're one of the many people who have favorited this without leaving feedback, please leave some love now! Thank you!_


	30. Chapter 29

_A/N: Oh my gosh you guys...for some reason I'm having the hardest time getting back into writing. But a bunch of you have asked if I've given up on this story and the answer is NO. I'm always thinking about it. But lately writing it has been IMPOSSIBLE. Hopefully getting this chapter out of the way helps._

_Anyway...here goes nothing._

* * *

**CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE  
**

* * *

There's nothing I can say but goodbye as I prepare to board the train. Annie, having bid her family farewell in private, is already in her compartment with Mags. All that's left is for me to give the Crestas my final words because one way or another, I doubt I'll ever see them again. My eyes meet Annie's father's as I struggle to find the right thing to say, but all I can think is I'm sorry. I'm sorry about your son. I'm sorry I brought this all upon you when I fell in love with your daughter.

Without warning, Ariana throws herself into my arms. I pat her back, still watching her father. She kisses my cheek quickly. Mr. Cresta nods. Mrs. Cresta says, "Goodbye, Finnick." Then I'm on the train watching them disappear probably for the last time.

Tomorrow night, while everyone else in District 4 gathers to watch the coverage of Katniss and Peeta in the Capitol, the Crestas will be executing the escape plan I devised. As I take a seat on the bed in my compartment, I tell myself that it is best that they make this attempt while I'm gone. Any suspicion of my involvement will only make things worse. And if they die trying without my help, I'll spend the rest of my life knowing that I was responsible for the death of every person in Annie's family.

A door opens, revealing both an attendant and the sound of Annie's screams from several compartments away. My first instinct is to run to her, but then where would we be? Her in my arms, me yelling for someone to turn the train around. That's all Snow needs to hear.

The attendant tells me that Mags wants my permission to give Annie something to take the edge off. He's being vague about it which means Mags is being vague about it, which means they probably want to give her something they're afraid I won't like. Or maybe Mags is just afraid I might want some too. I tell him, "Yeah. Okay," because even the effects of morphling would be preferable to this.

A little while later, once I'm sure the screaming has stopped, I go to sit with Annie. Fresh tears streak her face but her breathing is rhythmic and she's sitting still. I take her hand in mine while Mags looks on.

"What did you give her?" I ask. In answer, Mags holds out a pill identical to the ones she gave me for my dislocated shoulder. More than anything, they helped with the impossible pains in my head and heart. "I thought you were all out of them," I say.

Mags gives me a look that says, _No, I was only done giving them to you._

An hour later, I'm whisked away by my prep team so that I can look perfect for whomever Snow has waiting for me in the Capitol. Judging by the way things went when Katniss and Peeta were in District 4, I doubt he wants any of the victors around much to converse with one another. I'm bound by my duty to show up, and I'm hoping Johanna has enough sense to stay home. Then there's Annie, who doesn't belong in the Capitol at all. But I think I know President Snow, and I'm sure if I had left Annie home, he would have had something to say about it. Probably he'd say that he's surprised I could leave her unattended, given all that's happened. I'm willing to bet that he's expecting her, and that he's got something set up for me as a price for his keeping her out of things while she's in the Capitol.

My body gives an involuntary shake in revulsion of the idea of him doing anything to her. The guy fixing my nails tells me to hold still.

I try to think of Annie, though, and not of her parents and sister. Annie is with me. Annie I can keep safe, whatever the cost. I tell myself this over and over until it makes me dizzy. I remind myself that I have information on Snow...not that I'm sure how I could safely use it against him.

By the time dinner is served, Mags can sense my distress and offers me half of one of the pills. Instead, I drink what I'm guessing is too much wine before going to bed alone.

I wake just as Annie's hair and makeup are receiving their final touches. She's dressed in a floor-length lace gown the color of sand, with her hair straight instead of in its usual wild curls. Her makeup barely changes her appearance, least of all the redness around her eyes. I tell her she looks pretty and feel my cheeks burn. The prep team pretends not to notice. Mags beams.

I step onto the platform and help Mags and then Annie down from the train. A hand smacks the back of my head and I know it's Johanna before I can see her. I turn to greet her just in time to see her notice Annie. For a few seconds, the woman who has been my best friend in the Capitol surveys the woman from my district whom I love. In that moment, I see how truly different they are. While Annie looks like home even in her expensive dress, Johanna looks like we all do when we're here. Her bright purple dress hugs her curvy body and shows a lot of flesh. The dark makeup on her eyelids makes her look more sexy and deadly than girly. It's their eyes though, that make me notice something else. Annie's light green, always wet-looking eyes aren't that much unlike Johanna's dark brown, intense ones. Both women's eyes contribute to the idea that, even though they're both here in body, they're off somewhere else in their heads. Their eyes remind me that I'll never fully understand either of them or the things the Hunger Games have done to them.

Then I realize that Annie and Johanna are two sides of one coin. They are the two sides of me.

"Charmed, I'm sure," Johanna says to Annie in the nicest voice she can muster. Then she grabs me by the hand and asks, "Can I speak to you?" while dragging me away.

"Why are you here? You should have stayed home," I tell her in a rushed whisper.

"They don't scare me, Finnick. What are they going to do to me, huh?"

"They'll find something."

"Then why is your girlfriend here?"

"Because..." I start, not knowing how to say what I want to say without completely insulting her.

"Because you'd be willing to let people do things to you just so you can save her," Johanna finishes, her usual bitterness gone from her voice. "You're really something else, you know that?"

"You wanted to speak to me?" I remind her.

"Yeah. They don't want any of us talking, I heard. Especially not to the _star-crossed lovers_." She finishes the sentence with finger quotes and a facial expression full of disgust.

"Where does that leave you?"

"With your girlfriend, I guess. While you're off fu-"

"Thanks, Jo. I know what I'll be doing."

She smiles as though she thinks she's the most adorable or ironic person in the world. Then she says softly and completely seriously, "You going to be okay hanging out with her after all of that?"

I shrug.

Johanna walks me back to Annie and tells her, "He's a keeper, this one. Great in bed, I've heard. Decent kisser, too. You should try him out." I can't help but laugh even though I should be hitting Johanna for possibly making Annie feel uncomfortable. Annie only smiles, looking not at Johanna but at me.

There's a stand that's erected in the Capitol at this time every year that serves as a seating place for special guests. In the past, "special guests" have included victors such as myself, a few from other districts, and occasionally Johanna. The beautiful ones. The ones who get plucked away from the party one by one. This year, the stand is full of faces I hardy recognize. None of them, I'm sure, are victors.

A girl whose aqua hair and translucent skin remind me of images I've seen of mermaids tells me Snow would like to see me. _Of course he would_, I think. I let the woman, who introduces herself as Catilina, guide me just inside his mansion, where couches and chairs are being set up for tonight's party. Snow is there, sitting on one of the sofas, adjusting the rose in his lapel.

He looks up, smiles sickeningly, and says, "Don't look so nervous, Finnick. I merely wanted to ask how you were mending."

Sure he was. Next he'll say that this has nothing to do with Annie.

I flex. Raise my arm over my head. It hurts, but I try not to let that show. Swing my arm in large circles. Show him I'm fine.

The president nods. "And Annie?"

"Well enough to make the trip here to see Katniss and Peeta again."

"Forgive me for saying this Finnick, but you seem changed since your friend's accident."

There he goes again. Trying to get under my skin. "Accident? No, sir. Annie's safety is and always has been my priority. She's at a bigger risk of being injured by stupidity at home than by citizens here."

"And your friend from District 7 doesn't mind having to share you?"

My heart quickens and my palms start to sweat. Where is he going with this? I try to be hard, the way Johanna is. "She let her family die to save herself. I don't think she cares much about anything."

Now he laughs. "You are very keen, Finnick. Well, I have an event to attend, and Catilina has waited long enough to have you to herself."

Then he's gone and I'm left standing there wondering whether there's something I missed. Catilina says, "You handled him well," before kissing me hungrily on the mouth.

Throughout the night, I focus on the physicality to distract myself from home and from Annie. At some point, I find out that Katniss and Peeta are now engaged, which only makes patrons more eager to be with victors tonight. Occasionally, I try to find out how Annie is. "I'll bet the girl from my district is beside herself with happiness about the engagement," I say. They always agree, never say anything to indicate that she might be in danger or simply might not be coping.

One woman leaves and another comes in. She takes off her shirt and then takes off her wedding band. I ask if her husband knows she's here.

"Of course he does, silly. He's next door with a pretty little victor of his own."

I pull her onto me. "Oh yeah? What district?" I ask, just to be sure.

She hisses into my ear. "Seven."

I try to tell myself that she must be mistaken but it's no use. What did Snow say, I wonder, to make Johanna agree to this? It's my own fault for taunting Snow, saying that Johanna didn't care about anything.

I stay on the the bottom and have the women pin my arms painfully above my head, desperate for a distraction. It's no use. There's no way I can finish this. I'm forced to do what I can to guarantee this one leaves satisfied. Then I bang on the door of the room next to mine until a large male from District 2 answers the door. He and the two Capitol women on his bed are all naked. "You want one?" he asks. I walk away.

I find Johanna in the same place I find Annie and Mags, sitting at a table near the food, as far away from the rest of the party as they can get. I inhale deeply before taking a seat. "Where were you?" I ask Johanna as calmly as I can while Mags pushes a plate of food in front of me.

"Around. You're not the only one who can have fun around here," Johanna says, smiling at Annie. She puts her hand in my pocket and retrieves a multicolored pearl necklace and some earrings. Tonight's pay. I watch her, still not sure what to think, as she checks Annie's and then Mags's ears. "Not pierced, either," she says. "What do we think, then?" She holds one of the dangling things up to her nose. "Here." She tosses the pearls to Annie. "They're probably from your district originally anyway."

"I'm fine," Johanna says to me as an aside."

"I heard-"

"I don't care what you heard. He's trying to hurt you. Now eat."

It's the roll of her eyes that signals that she's okay, even if I still think she's lying. "Where are the guests of honor anyway?" I manage in an effort to return to normalcy.

Johanna points and through the crowd I see Katniss dancing with the new head Gamemaker. When I turn back to Jo, she has her finger in her mouth as though she's forcing up vomit. Mags slaps Johanna's hand down which makes me choke on my first bite of food. Even Annie laughs, but Johanna shoots her a look that makes her come to a nervous stop.

"Play nice," I warn Johanna. She bats her eyelashes sarcastically. I remind her she's already feigned innocence once and that we all know her better by now. Inexplicably, this makes her look at Annie with even more loathing.

Haymitch asks to borrow me. I joke that I'm actually done for the night and that he can try again in a few months. He isn't amused, but I'm glad for the chance to talk to him.

At the bar, Haymitch combines the contents of several small glasses into one larger one. "Things at home?" he asks casually.

"Shitty."

He grunts. "Should only be a while longer we think."

"Mm," I agree, even though the guy's not making any sense. I follow Haymitch's eyes around the room, where victors are, for the first time I can remember, largely absent from the festivities. "What's happening?" I ask.

"Her," Haymitch says, nodding toward Katniss. "Talk to her yet?" he asks me. I tell him no. He gives a hearty chuckle. "I can't wait to see how that goes. Just do us all a favor and try to remember that she's ignorant and arrogant and new at this, and don't kill her for saying something stupid to you."

"I'll try to keep that in mind."

"She doesn't know half of what goes on. I'd like to keep it that way."

This new, caring Haymitch makes me uncomfortable, so I say, "Maybe I'll play with her."

"Well then you'll have the boy to worry about," he says. I find Peeta in the crowd, watching his fiancée and Plutarch carefully. "You of all people can sympathize with him."

"Speaking of which, I should get back before Johanna kills my girlfriend." My casual use of Johanna's word for Annie catches me off-guard. "Take care, Haymitch."

Johanna purposely bumps her hip into mine on my way back to the table. "Your girlfriend's pretty weird."

I grab her by the throat and push her into the tiled wall of the bathroom corridor. Several people jump back. A woman in the ladies' room screams. Johanna says, "He likes to play rough."

"What are you doing?" I ask her.

"What are _you_ doing?"

"You gave up everything to avoid this life," I remind her. "What did he tell you?"

"No one told me _anything_. He knew it would get to you if you thought I was forced into it. How stupid can you be. He doesn't have to manipulate you any more. You do it to yourself."

"Why did you do it then?"

"Because I like to fuck around with them. I'm just not stupid enough to get forced into doing it for life by falling in love."

She disappears into the bathroom. I have nothing to do but go back to the table.

After a while, it becomes obvious that Annie's trying too hard to concentrate, and people give her weird looks when she misses pieces of conversations and answers questions the wrong way. She says, "No, thank you," for example, when asked what it's like to be back in the Capitol. Eventually Johanna returns, pleasant as ever. She hardly tries to conceal her growing amusement at Annie's distress. Like Annie, I drift between here and home. Her family might be running. They might be hiding. They might be dead. I don't know that I'll find out which has happened even once we're home. I tell myself this is what's best.

Again, farewells go by too quickly. Johanna says nothing to me, but I catch her eye for long enough to see that she looks like she's about to cry. Then we're on the train and Annie is crying and it takes her pushing me away several times before I realize it's not just that she's being crazy. She really doesn't want me to touch her.

I'm not used to being so useless when it comes to helping her.

I need a drink or a pill.

No. I need reality. I need Johanna to slap me in the face. I need Annie in my arms.

I need a shower.

I undress in the bedroom, kick my clothes across the floor, and hope that one of the attendants has the sense to remove them before I return.

The water comes out in bursts of cleansing heat and numbing cold. I quickly realize that I don't mind Annie pushing me away. I didn't like having Annie near me when I felt this way four years ago. I didn't know then that I could ever love her. I hate this all even more now.

It annoys me that I have to share Mags. It annoys me that Annie is monopolizing my mentor's attention when I'm the one who needs someone right now. She sat and had dinner while I got fucked every which way and pretended to like it. Forget about Johanna. I still don't know what to believe about that.

My anger combines with my disgust for my own selfishness to trigger my gag reflex.

I'm about to hurl when there's a knock on the door and Annie asks if she can come in. The door opens before I can say no, and then she's in shower with me, clothes on and all.

I'm more embarrassed for my battle wounds than for my nakedness. "What the hell are you doing?" I breathe while I try to stop my body from reacting the same way it's done all night. Thankfully, I'm too worn out to have to worry.

Annie seems not to notice that I'm naked or that she's in the shower ruining her dress. All she does is throw herself in my arms just like always. Everything about her feels like home.

Four years ago, Annie held my hand and I swore it was the closest I would ever get to her. I exhale into her hair which thanks to the water, is springing into soft waves that will become her usual curls. I'm glad because nothing else about what's happening is familiar.

I could kiss her. And if I wasn't so worn and didn't have a heart, I could make love to her here in the shower. But I've never had sex for the enjoyment or entertainment of it. If it ever happens with Annie, it will be because nothing else would make our relationship more perfect or complete.

Now is not that moment. So I yell for Mags to come take her, and now both of the only two women I'll ever love have joined the hundreds who have seen all of me. We wrap Annie in every towel in the bathroom. Mags tells me to go. I find long pants and a long sleeved shirt in one of my drawers and give them to Mags for Annie. She closes the door that divides my bathroom and bedroom. I put on underwear and a robe and wish this day would just end.

Mags comes out first and joins me on the sofa in my room. Then comes out, obviously embarassed because she realizes now what's happened.

"I'm sorry about Johanna being mean to you," I tell her. "That was my fault."

"I liked her. She makes you laugh." She sits on my other side.

To relieve some of the tension, I say to Mags, "You know you owe me payment for what you saw, right?"  
She flashes her near-barren gums and offers me her left slipper.

I tell Annie, "I'll get the right one from you, then."

She forces a smile and lays her head on my shoulder.

We don't waste time wondering what awaits us at home. We fall asleep quickly. And when Annie starts to stir, my eyes fly open and I prepare to save her from a nightmare.

Instead of crying out, she whispers, "I didn't think it would be this hard."

"What would?"

"Seeing it all happen." She at least partially means the stuff about me, I think. "I understand now why you tried to push me away."

"Okay," is all I can say. I haven't slept this well in a while. Every part of my body aches to go back to rest.

I can't tell whether I've fallen back to sleep when she says, "Finnick," and forces my eyes open again.

"Yes?"

"Thanks for always taking care of me."

I close my eyes and mumble unintelligably..

"Finn?" she says.

Eyes still closed, I smile at the sound of my name.

"I love you," she whispers.

She'll never know how good it feels to hear those words, but I do my best anyway and tell her I love her too. Tonight, everything else that's currently weighing on me can wait. Tonight I'll finally allow myself to be hers.

* * *

_Thank you again to everyone who has taken the time to review. You guys are the reason I'm still writing at all. Additionally, to anyone who's new to this story, please check out my other work...especially _**A Night for Firsts**_. I promise you'll love it._

_Soooo... what did you think?_


	31. Chapter 30

_A/N: Only one more chapter and an epilogue after this one, but I'm already working on two new projects to go along with this story so don't worry! Eventually, I'll write more of what happens after this, but it was always my intention to end _**Crept Up On Me **_exactly where it began._

_Thank you to all of my very kind reviewers, without whom this story would have been abandoned long ago._

* * *

**CHAPTER THIRTY**

* * *

It seems like I've only just fallen asleep when Annie begins her usual tossing and turning. I wait to see if she'll ease herself out of the nightmare on her own, but when she starts to call out her sister's name, I know I have no choice but to wake her.

"Shhhh." The noise escapes through my teeth in something more like a whistle than a whisper. "Hey," I say, seizing Annie's arms and shaking her awake. "It's okay. Wake up. You're okay."

Annie's eyes open, glowing like an animal's in the dark. A tear sparkles on her cheek before falling onto her pillow.

"You were having a nightmare. It's fine. You're okay. It wasn't real. None of what you saw was real."

The words of consolation repeat automatically until Annie decides to trust me. Slowly, she creeps into the place she usually sleeps, with her head on my shoulder and my arm around her.

I can't help but feel bad for this, for making her trust me night after night when I'm lying to her. The empty train station when we arrived. The bloated bodies of those who would have escaped, if only they'd been able to hold their breath a little longer. The added security everywhere. Everything points to the fact that nothing is fine.

Annie assumed the worst, while I found fleeting comfort in the various states of decay of the dead. Her parents and sister, if they had been captured or killed, would have been made entirely recognizable to us. I wondered if they might be at home, alive or not, but they weren't. If they're dead, they're dead outside of District 4.

Not having them here, not knowing where or how they are is harder for Annie than I anticipated. She seems fine until all of a sudden she's not. Sleep is out of the question for any of us.

"It was the Quarter Quell," Annie interrupts my thoughts, her voice hoarse. "They made it so anyone could be reaped, regardless of age. The girl tribute was Ariana. It was Ariana. It was my sister."

I pull her head into my chest as she loses herself in a fit of hysterics. Nightmares about her sister are the most common. Ones like this reinforce the idea that I did the right thing by convincing them to escape. Wherever they are, they are safe from whatever fates Annie can dream up. In real life, she won't have to watch them die.

I wasn't alive for the last Quarter Quell, but I know enough about it anyway. The year of the Fiftieth Hunger Games, twice the usual number of children were reaped. The entire arena was loaded with poison. Fourty-seven children were maimed by mutts and each other before Haymitch was crowned the victor. This year another twist will be introduced, though after last year's Games, they'll have to try extra hard be shocking. Annie's idea of tributes of any age might work. A father pit against his own son. Friends who have spent larger parts of their lives together than not.

I guess I fall asleep. At least it feels like I've been sleeping when I open my eyes again and find myself alone in bed. Annie is in her chair, the one from her room in her old house, next to our bed in Mags's. We are the way I imagine an old married couple to be. We sleep in the same bed. We kiss in the same way parents kiss their children on the lips. We take care of each other. We say "I love you." I often wake up to find her knitting in her rocker. And when I wake first, I bring her breakfast in bed. We don't do anything more than kiss. Sometimes, I think she'd like to, but she loves me more than to say so. Even more rarely, I think I want to too, but I love her more than to make love to her when I'll be bedded by other women in a few months' time.

There's the sound of pots and pans in the kitchen, and Annie and I smile at each other before getting to our feet and racing down the stairs to steady Mags's teetering stool. After breakfast, Annie joins me at the school training center where almost every kid in our district has started exercising and learning fighting and survival skills over the past several weeks. Everyone's excuse is that constant training is the only way anyone will maintain their strength and dexterity once business finally resumes, but with the Quarter Quell announcement coming at any time, the Peacekeepers must know that this is a lie.

Like me, Annie has found that being involved in training takes away from the feelings of helplessness. She teaches knot-tying and weaving techniques useful for shelters and traps. Other than when I used to watch her swim, it's the most sane I've seen her. Eventually, she's told me, she'd like to teach advanced swimming. Of course, she'll have to get herself back in the water first.

"Or maybe," she says on the way back home, "I'll teach swimming to kids who are afraid like I am."

I don't have the heart to tell her that she's probably the only person in District 4 with a fear of water. Anyway, once the Quarter Quell rolls around, she'll freak out and be incapable of working with the kids anymore, the same way she relapsed with the whole water thing after her brother's funeral. Nothing with Annie ever lasts.

At night, Annie wears the dress she wore on our first "date" for a meager dinner at Isla's house. There isn't any fresh food to be had in our district, unless you count anything that's not seafood, which most of us don't.

After, Isla brings out a cake to celebrate Mags's eightieth birthday this weekend, and Mags jokes that she might have to make one last trip to the Capitol so she can treat herself to breast implants.

Everyone laughs. Isla says something about floatation devices. I say, "How about some dental implants first, old lady?" Mags purses her thin lips and does her best to raise her eyebrows in mock consideration before shaking her head. I have to laugh through my nose. The fact that I am able to cope with anything at all...I think that must come from Mags.

Annie leans forward to help herself to a slice of cake, and I watch the strand of peacock pearls fall over the neck of her dress. She sees me eyeing it, fingers it defensively, and says, "It was a gift from Johanna."

My tongue is still feeling out a retort when Isla says, "Well it looks beautiful on you, Annie."

"That's what Johanna said, too," she says, smiling. She takes it off and hands it to Pisces. "They're pearls. All different colors," she tells him. He smiles, fingertips counting the beads.

"I know you won't be happy," Isla says, looking from me to Annie, "but we should talk about the Quell."

"Annie and I will mentor," I say carefully. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Annie flinch. "Everyone else will hold things down here. I don't see any other way it will work."

"I could go," Vessel says. "Pisces got the last Quell. I could get this one. You could stay."

"Snow won't let him," Mags supplies. Isla says something else while I sit staring at Vessel, unable to reconcile the words with the mental images of the tribute who dislocated my shoulder. What does he have to gain from volunteering for me?

On the walk home, I distract my thoughts from Vessel with another question and ask Annie why she wants the wretched necklace. She says it reminds her of the night I let her tell me she loves me.

I wait until the others have disappeared into their houses before I say, "That dress reminds me of the night we had dinner here. Do you remember?"

She nods, looking back toward the window from which her father watched us that night. I pull her chin back toward me before she can get lost in thoughts of the family she'll never see again.

"I asked you to tell me something then, but I never let you say it. Remember? What was it?"

She sits on the ground and toys with the hem of her dress until I move to the space right in front of her, blocking her view of the house she recently stopped sharing with her parents.

"Only that I used to talk to Mags. Before you came to see me, I mean."

She continues to fidget while I try to recall the conversation with Mags so many years ago. _Girls like you_, she had said. As if that alone would have been enough encouragement to make me visit the crazy girl whom I could never understand. I ask, "What did she say to you?"

"She told me about you. Just stories. The first time you brought her to your house for a meal with your father. How you spent a lot of time by yourself. How she worried sometimes that you were growing up too fast." She pauses and then quickly adds, "She talked about the others, too. She told me that she worried about Vessel even before he won his Games because he lived in the community home and didn't seem quite right. The way she said everything, she sounded like a grandma telling stories about her grandchildren. She said everything as though she couldn't be prouder of any of you, even though none of you really turned out the way a real grandmother would hope."

She leans to look around me and into the window of her old house. I take a step to the side and tell her softly, "No one's there," even though I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Mags never mentioned any of this to me. "Why was she so hellbent on getting me to talk to you then?"

"She really loves you," Annie says. "I guess she knew that eventually I would too."

For a fraction of a second, I wish Johanna could be here. I can't talk to Annie about my fears about Mags. Not anymore. The older I get, the more it seems I need my mentor. The older I get, the older she gets. I say, "Maybe I can get a fancy Capitol doctor to have a look at Mags, you know? Get her in working order again."

Annie takes my hand and pulls me to a crouching position in front of her. With my hand still in hers, she says, "You know she wouldn't want that."

It still amazes me, her ability to be the rational one when everything's falling apart.

Annie whispers, "I also wanted to kiss you, but I told you that already."

"Yeah," I say, thinking back on the time we went swimming at the pool. "I remember. Come on. It's curfew soon," I say, pointing to the moon's position in the sky.

"Tell me about Vessel. It'll make you feel better."

"You won't want to hear it."

"I'm going to see a lot worse if I go with you. Think of it as a training exercise."

"I was nine when they asked him to stay out of the Capitol. All I remember is that he did a shit job as mentor." Her silence says that this isn't enough information, that she knows I'm withholding more of the story. "When Vessel won...His intention in the Games was to incapacitate rather than kill his opponents. Anyone who tried to attack Vessel ended up with a broken arm or leg or jaw and was left to suffer until they starved or were put out of their misery. I think he went downhill when he saw the tapes and realized that he should have just killed them all himself. And when he was mentor, he got a scrawny kid. And he convinced that kid that it would be better to slit his own throat than to go up against any of the others."

"Mags knew he was the only person who could get you to do what you needed to do with Adrian," Annie says, her voice barely audible in the wind.

She leans in, pushes my shirt aside, and kisses my shoulder. "Annie, I'm so sorry," I breathe. Her mouth leads trails of heat that turn instantly cold in the night air.

"You're a good guy, Finn. And that's why Vessel offered to take your place. Now let's go home."

* * *

_Thanks for sticking with this story. As always, I love hearing from you guys._

_See you next time.  
_


	32. Chapter 31

_Author's Note: Finally ready and, more importantly, willing to post the final chapter. Thank you, all, for your continued support of this story, which has been in the making for over a year and a half. I could not have ever done this without my readers, whose continued interest has given me a reason to keep writing._

_There will still be an epilogue, which will be posted before the new year begins. 2012 will be for new projects. _

_Enjoy. _

* * *

**CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE**

* * *

I'm helping a kid with his throwing stance when the head Peacekeeper comes into the training center and announces that there's mandatory programming tonight. My hands and face go numb as I come to the sudden realization that this could only be about one thing. Why else have the Capitol forces in our district afforded these children the opportunity to train even with our boating and fishing rights suspended indefinitely? Tonight's mandatory programming must be about the Quarter Quell.

I chew the inside of my cheek as I look across the large room to Annie, who seems unsure what to think. Everyone waits for this bearer of bad news to leave and then the entire room erupts into confused conversation. Annie runs to me, her hair bouncing in a mess of curls. "Do you think that maybe it's about Katniss and Peeta's wedding?"

One of the girls in the eighteen-year-old group says she overheard one of our new Peacekeepers complaining about some sort of voting process for Katniss's wedding dress. "Said he was glad to be out of the Capitol circuit and get our normal coverage of old Games footage."

Annie smiles. "That means they're okay."

After dinner, I go to Vessel's house to watch whatever the mandatory programming is with him. If it is something about Katniss and Peeta's wedding, I'm not sure I can bear to watch it in Annie's presence. Maybe I'm immature, but I have a hard time watching the life I'd so desperately like to have with Annie get forced down the throats of some young kids who, like the rest of us, would be better left alone.

And if I'm right about the programming being about the Quell, maybe I want to have Vessel around to keep me from doing something crazy, especially if this year's twist is something that will make Annie's nightmares come true.

Vessel sits with his usual brooding intensity while we wait in silence for whatever President Snow wants us to see. Then, at precisely seven-thirty, Caesar Flickerman greets us from in front of the Capitol's Training Center. I'm still unconvinced that this isn't something sinister, but Vessel, who witnessed the second Quarter Quell announcement at a young age, understands immediately that this is something different. "Unbelievable," he mutters as he gets up and heads into the kitchen.

What follows is a ridiculous display only the Capitol could appreciate. Photographs show Katniss Everdeen wearing about a dozen different dresses that are each probably worth at least a week of food for everyone in a district as large as mine. Here a wedding is about honoring another person, not about diamonds and silk. I can't decide whether the worst part is how miserable Katniss looks or the fact that people in the Capitol audience have the audacity to yell horrible things about the dresses they don't like. I'm about to turn off the television and go home when Caesar Flickerman tells us all to stay tuned.

"Hey, Vessel," I call, but I already hear his heavy tread returning to the room.

"That's right, this year will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Hunger Games, and that means it's time for our Quarter Quell!" Caesar beams.

Vessel and I exchange glances before fixing our eyes back on the screen. President Snow appears and explains exactly what this means. He tells us of the first Quell, in which citizens of each district elected their tributes. The second Quell, in which twice as many children were reaped. All I can think is that none of this seems as bad as the things Annie and I have dreamed up. Nothing would be as bad as having our parents or siblings brought back from the dead to be dropped into an arena. But they are gone and therefore safe.

I can feel Vessel standing, holding his breath behind me as a boy holds out a box to President Snow, who pulls out a card. He reads, "On the seventy-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that even the strongest among them cannot overcome the power of the Capitol, the male and female tributes will be reaped from their existing pool of victors."

The floor shifts and room begins to spin. The words echo in my head until I'm pressing my hands over my temples and ears, trying to silence President Snow's voice. I try to run through the names of the other victors, those I could ally with in order to have some chance of escaping this, but the only victors who matter right now are those here in 4. My name will be called. I know my name will be called. _The strongest among us. _That's Vessel, except that I've got ten years worth of information that's more powerful against Snow than muscle or weapons. He's done with me. I'm going in and I'm not coming back.

Mags. Mags will volunteer, regardless of who gets picked. Annie. Annie's name will be pulled, because what could possibly make it worse for me? But Mags will volunteer to protect Annie. To protect me.

All at once, all the memories I've made since I came home from the Games flash through my head. My father trying to understand. Me thinking everything was fine. The women. Meeting Annie. Hating Johanna. Kissing Johanna. Falling in love with Annie. My father's death. Adrian's murder. The nights spent in bed with Annie. And, throughout everything, Mags.

The television clicks off. I turn to see Vessel with the remote in his hand. "We've always been the targets. First us. Then our friends and families. Now back to us."

In a fleeting moment of selfishness I wish that he would volunteer, again, to take my place so that I can stay with Annie. But I know everything has changed. Anyway, he's right. We are the targets. I am a target. If Snow wants me dead, better it happen in an arena than at home with Annie so close. Sitting this one out was never an option.

"You'll stay with her." I'm on my feet now, pacing to try to keep my head from spinning because I'm afraid I'm going to be sick. "You're the only one who can protect her. Isla and Pisces will be the mentors. Mags and I will go in. That's the way it has to be. You know that, right?"

Vessel sits and puts his head in his hands.

Outside, it's raining and it's darker than usual and the ground moves in waves under my feet. My brain and body operate independently of one another. I try to will my legs to carry me home, but it's no use; every time I feel myself running, when my eyes focus enough to let me see where I am, I find myself still standing exactly where I started. I take a deep breath and try again to run, only to have the world go blurry.

"Finnick!" Annie calls from some place I can't see. She must spot me even though I can't see her, maybe because I'm crying now that I've heard her voice. How many more times will I hear her say my name before I die? My ears register the sound of her splashing footsteps coming closer until she stops right in front of me, soaked to the skin, her hair dripping.

"You're going back, aren't you?" she cries.

I wipe my eyes and clear my throat. "Annie, you know I have to go back. He's gunning for some of us more than others. You'll be safe." My voice cracks on the last word. I swear loudly.

"Mags said she's going to go but I don't want her to. I want to go with you."

"You have to stay here so that when I win I can come back to you." It's surprising, really, how easily I'm able to lie to her.

"We can run away," she pleads. "We can catch up with Mom and Dad and Ariana if we leave soon enough." She waits for me to say something, but I don't have the heart to disagree with her. "But I love you," she pleads, as though this might somehow change my fate.

"I love you," I say, but before the words are fully out, our mouths become pressed together so quickly that it's unclear who initiated the kiss. Everything is a mess of lips and tongues and teeth, and her hands are on my face and mine are tangled in her hair. Through our wet clothes, my body registers every curve of hers. The delicate breasts against my muscled chest. Her hips pressing into mine. I kiss her harder, struggling momentarily to untangle my hands before moving them to her small waist. Her fingernails rake my shoulders. My teeth tug on her bottom lip.

Annie pushes her tiny body harder into mine. My heels hit Vessel's bottom step and I let myself fall into a sitting position. I pull Annie's legs on top of mine without separating my mouth from hers. My lungs feel too big for my chest and refuse to let me take in any air. All I can do is exhale in loud mixes of pain and pleasure.

Annie puts her hands on my face again, steadying me because I'm shaking so badly. I pull her in closer, hold on so tightly that I know I must be hurting her.

Annie whispers, "Don't go," into my mouth, and just like that the kissing ends. Annie looks away and shakes her head slowly. She know, she must know, that I have to leave her.

I tuck a finger under her chin, tilting her face towards mine. "Annie, listen to me. I will find my way back to you. Do you understand?"

She nods. Her eyes close, sending fresh tears down her cheeks and onto my fingers.

And I know that the words must be true. I've done this before and now I'm older. Stronger. Smarter. This time, I'll have Mags. Johanna.

_Johanna. _I swallow hard as I try to imagine how Johanna, who has sacrificed everything for a chance at normalcy is taking this turn of events. Surely her brutal nature won't win out over years of friendship.

My fingers press into my temples again as I try to force ideas from my head. _More than one of us will make it. More than one tribute has made it out before._

"I will come home to you, Annie," I say again, for myself as much as for her.

Annie says, "I know." She rubs her thumb along my cheek. She kisses my brow bone and then my lips.

I'm immediately lost and at ease in the tenderness of it. Simultaneously, the moment is both everything I've been hiding from and what I've been searching for for nearly ten years. The physicality is the distraction it's always been. Annie is everything I've ever needed.

Having already decided that I'll never push her away again, I allow myself to stay lost until Annie pulls away. "I love you."

"I love you, too," I answer. "Now come on. I need to talk to Mags."

* * *

_Please let me know what you thought of the ending. Also, if you've been reading all this while and haven't reviewed, just review this one time so I can include you in my massive thank you note that will be attached to the epilogue (which you can expect before the month is over)._


	33. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE**

* * *

The morning of the reaping starts where most days end.

The battle to stay awake and safe from nightmares has become the battle to keep dreaming, lest the nightmare begins. I keep my eyes closed and breathe in the scent of Annie's hair. My hand finds hers on my chest and my fingertips trace the thin twine looped around her finger. When I'm gone, this will be her reminder that she has someone who loves her, someone she'll see again someday. When she reaches for a pill or searches Mags's cabinets for a rare cube of sugar, when she scratches at her skin, she'll see the twine and think of me, and maybe she'll remember that she's okay.

I hold on to the moment for as long as I can before I open my eyes and join the others downstairs. Plans can't be discussed here, but the looks in their eyes affirm that we're all together on this. On the train, Pisces, Isla, Mags, and I will use the replays to complete the final steps of determining which of the tributes will be mine and Mags's allies in the arena. Vessel will be at Mags's house, making sure that Annie doesn't try to leave it. We can only hope that Beetee and his team in three were able to spread the message to more districts than his, ours, 7, 11, and, of course, Haymitch in 12. It's so hard to know who to trust.

In town, Peacekeepers quarantine the six of us into pens. They're separated enough so that Annie and I can't reach each other. All I can do is lock my eyes on hers and drown out the world around us. Annie chews on her bottom lip, badly reddening it, but she fights to keep her eyes on mine. For as long as I can hold her attention like this, she'll be fine. It's this task of keeping her distracted that keeps me sane.

I wish I could tell her that I love her, and I tell myself that she knows this. Annie knows that I love her. Maybe she's always known.

Will she always know?

"Annie Cresta!"

I watch Annie search the sky, as though maybe it was a seagull instead of a loudspeaker that called out her name. Mags waves her hand in front of Annie's face and points directly at me, a reminder for Annie to stay here, to stay in the present with me for a few seconds longer, before raising her own hand up and signaling that she will be taking Annie's place.

I know our time is limited, and I clench my jaw until it hurts, until my name is called, too. And for some reason I'll never understand, I smile. Through the tears, Annie smiles back. Then I look away, knowing that so much as glancing in her direction again will end me. _Five minutes_, I tell myself. _Less than five minutes until you're off the stage and on the train and it will start to get easier then._

In the Justice Building Mags puts her bony little hand in mine as we're told that we won't be afforded further goodbyes. This makes no difference; Vessel had instructions to bring Annie home as soon as he was allowed to do so. What does matter is Mags and her words that I catch in fragments. "Such a good boy." "Be fine." "So proud." Nothing of arenas or arrangements to put our cause above each other's lives.

I squeeze her hand tightly in mine and let her words, like a lullaby, sooth me until we board the train.

* * *

_I hope you are all as satisfied with the conclusion as I am. This story has been my life for so long, and while I am heartbroken that it has come to a close, I am also incredibly proud of what I have created.  
_

_Thank you to everyone who has read this story. I can't emphasize enough how much your support has meant to me. Without you, I doubt that I would have made time to write when work seemed to take over my life last year.  
_

_Please add me to your author alerts if you haven't done so already, as I plan on releasing some new stuff that will be directly related to this story in the near future.  
_

_Feel free to message me for anything, whether it's a request for the list of songs that kept me inspired while writing this story or to ask me to check out something you've written. Or just to say hi. _

_All my love to_** Adrenaline Write**, **jensonluvsu**, **caisha702**, **KRK the JRK**, **here at the end**, **TheSeamGirl**,** The Other Perspective**,** raiseitup**,** Total Witch 17**, **PK9**, **SmartKookie**, **xparamorexbabex**, Blue, **Hahukum Konn**, Shar, **tell it to the sky**, **Whisperheart**, Sputnik, **Desmonda-Sight**, lilangel, **mockingbird-manikin**, **Max Alleyne**, **Black Coyote**, **Forsaken Dreamt**, **IoriKonaN**, **bella-sk8er**, KraftDinner, **RandomGeek**, **Sublime Skies**, **Cheaward**, page, **melliemoo**, anonymous, Saber, **epoc823**, **LouisaC**, **Stina Whatever**, **Finnick Odair Kicks Ass**, **Velma627**,**Curiously Cinnamon**, **justalittle l o o n y**, **littlespark**, **Where the Story Ends**, **TrappedInHerOwnWorld**, **PeetaMellark'sKatniss**, **brooke13243546**, **LexidaLou**, **cindella204**, Bethan jackson-Jones, **haleighlynn**, **buttercrumbs**, **SmurfLuvsCookies**, lila, **gibrelina**, **Anilem Atarih**, I love the hunger games, **PEEVSY**, Anon, **nakocheese**, **Dance Elle Dance**, **sunshinemeg82**, **Shay-of-Awe**, **VampGurl82**, **Henrietta Francis**, **Canadian-Girl14**, Snufkin, **all I need 22**, **darkangelgirl262**, **Supreme cookieeater NANCY**, **laughingismyhobbie**, **Howlynn**, Annalise Jones, **lifeiswow**, Emily, **bexzilla36**, **urstory**, Katie, **CrashAgainstMySkin**, **AxBeautifulxDisaster**, **ColumbiaUniversityPrincess**, **DCdreamer55**, **raspberrybubblegum**, **Dessmonda**, **Coz I'm Goffik**, me, **numbah435spiritsong**, **C****ymru na Alethaira**, **justbreatheslowly**, and **keniamunguia13**, _for your words of encouragement._

_Happy Holidays. See you in 2012.  
_


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